I've literally been full marks for over 2 years now, and rightfully so. I've PTR tested BM spec and survival post 2.0 without ever considering it for full time hardcore raiding. I was 21/30 back in the day as well.

Having said that, recently I have been wondering quite a bit about the 2.1 patch and the changes it will mean for pets in particular. Avoidance, increased attack speed, the new Hunter's Mark, the changes to Glancing Blows, etc. All this is making me wonder whether or not the BM tree will truly be a viable and top DPS build in 2.1. I'm also bringing this up due to the fact that 25 man raiding hunters are usually, (if at all possible), grouped with a Shadow Priest. If you aren't, get used to running OOM or blowing Fel Mana pots every 2 minutes, (which isn't fun).

Being stuck in a caster group most raids isn't exactly beneficial to anyone but myself. They don't exactly need TSA and I don't exactly want to be grouped with warriors and rogues to give them TSA because then it doesn't benefit my mana problems whatsoever. Going BM with Ferocious Inspiration is actually a reason to keep me in with an SP/Warlock/Mage/Ele Shaman group and maybe even have them request ME to be grouped with them for that 3% to all damage boost.

I've come to the basic conclusion that my damage, (fully buffed, potted, flasked), is never going to exceed or match the long-term dps fights of a warlock, mage, or shadow priest, (I'm talking casters with 1100+ spell damage that are absolute rockstars at their class). I'm not even going to mention how rogues and fury warriors will top the meters again come 2.1...

So what does this leave me with? It basically leaves me with the choice of coming to terms with personal DPS versus group utility. The Survival Tree change will have a nice change to Expose Weakness but guess what? We don't roll with a ton of melee in TBC raids. Its world of rangedcraft from here on out pretty much. So have any of you other long-term raiding hunters had the same thoughts on this as I am? Just curious.

The BM hunter in our guild already outclasses any other spec, so I imagine it will only get stronger.

I switched to 41/20/0 from 7/4x/x about a month ago, and have enjoyed higher dps ever since. I can pretty much assure you that 2.1's buffs to BM spec and pet damage/survivability will make the BM tree even more enjoyable.

With the obvious footnote that if the encounter isn't pet friendly (for me, Gruul comes to mind, although that might get easier after the mend pet change), you'll wind up doing less damage than your Marks spec, but not all that much.

So let me ask an honest (stupid) question: Why are any of your hunters anything BUT BM?

It seems that FI >> TSA, and I certainly can't think of any situation where Silencing SHot is helpful in raids, so why in the world are ANY hunters not BM? I feel like I'm missing something.

no joke? If you don't mind could you post his name, etc? I'd like to see his setup / talent configuration. Also, is he outclassing people in 25 man raids? I could see this happening pre 2.1 if you're talking 5 mans or Kara.

Arena.

Granted, Marks is good for arenas, but I think this thread pertains to raiding - if nothing else I base that purely on the title.

I would be interested to find out more about this. Even thinking of going BM spec makes me feel dirty, as I've been true Marksman since launch. But anything for better dps to justify the raid slot.

Indeed, I'm specifically looking for discussion / feedback on raids. Discount PVP, 5 mans, or Kara, (which I don't consider a real raid because of small group configuration and weaker mobs).

The BM Hunter (class leader) of our guild tends to either do the same or better damage in raids and 5-mans than MM hunters. I have never seen him significantly out-damaged by the MM Hunters in the guild (all of our Hunters are pretty good players and similarly geared, also) but regularly grabs the top spot himself. This is even considering fights such as Gruul.

His Profile:
http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...light&n=Polina

I think BM is highly underrated, and I'd imagine the incoming changes will push things even further in its favor.

pet survivability is the main reason I guess. I'm BM at the moment, and I wanted to spec it earlier, but had no choice but to stay MM since we were working at Gruul at the time. I can only imagine how BM spec was pre lb nerf.

Jayde, someone like Polina is a perfect example of a BM hunter that knows wtf they're doing. You can simply tell by looking at his/her armory profile. Thanks.

Question regarding Polina (I don't think he/she is reading this thread, but maybe someone else can help): when you've got your bow speed down to 2.1 with SS and quiver, is it better to keep the crit scope or swap for +12 damage?

I'm also considering switching from long-time MM to a BM build in 2.1.

1) With Serpent's Swiftness as all-powerful as it is, you can make up for 19 MM talent points (Barrage, Imp. Barrage, Master Marksman, Careful Aim, and Ranged Weapon Specialization) with just 5 points. I've found more and more due to lag/mana I use a auto/special rotation almost exclusively.

2) All of the epic ranged weapons are 2.7+ speed. They are perfect for a auto/special rotation with the 20% haste adjustment. Trying to fit 2 specials between autos is very difficult as MM, and gets impossible with Quick Shots.

Using a spreadsheet and taking everything into account, I see a BM Hunter doing 99% of the damage the MM hunter does - without factoring in the pet at all! Once you add in the extra +80% pet damage you get from the BM talents it's a no-brainer. Ferocious Inspiration is icing on the cake.

Unless Blizzard starts putting +RAP instead of +AP on gear (allowing Master Marksman to scale better), and come up with some way for TSA to scale MM isn't a very good tree. The utility (scatter/silencing) doesn't work in raids and the group buff is mediocre at best. My guild already has a die-hard Survival Hunter, so we have the Expose Weakness DPS-martyr covered.

I believe the main reason many hunters have an aversion to BM is it requires a great deal of micromanagment and multitasking. In a fight like Gruul, you have to focus on your shot timings while watching your own health, your mana, your position to avoid cave ins, and your pets health and position, not to mention making sure you hit your trinkets/rapid fires every time they're off cooldown, and watch your threatmeter (at least earlier in the fight). If your pet dies early as an MM hunter, it's a bummer as you'll lose something like 20% of your DPS potential, but if your pet dies early as a BM hunter you'll lose more like 30-35% of you DPS potential. So as a BM you really want to make sure your pet doesn't die early. It's one more thing to worry about I guess.

Thats a good question, but honestly I think it has to do with the min-max damage on the bow itself as also being a factor in crit scope vs damage. I'd stick with the 28 crit rating myself.

You are speaking of BM hunters being way better than other hunters in your guild, but how do they compare to the other dps classes in your guild? I am spec'd 0/31/30 and I have been able to stay at or near the top of the dps meters (against any class mage/lock/rogue etc.) I do have good gear but they do as well. Check my armory profile to see my gear. My guild has killed Gruul and Nightbane so we are not complete noobs. I have tried BM but I just can not keep my pet alive to in the important fights (this may change in 2.1 but I am still not sure it would be better than my spec.) to use his dps or beastial wrath. I am not trying to toot my own horn but I am saying a skilled player can do amazing dps as MM and even more with the hybrid 31/30 spec. My dps has been so good my guild leaders have asked me to try to help the other hunters so they are not always WAY below other dps classes. But really, all you BM guys, where do you compare to the locks/mages/rogues on fights like Gruul? If you have similar gear to them IT IS POSSIBLE to have the same (or even higher /shock) dps. Personally I am tired of the acceptance of hunters being on the bottom of the dps; we can be the best.

Be carefull that that comparison isn't made with low quality Marksman Hunters. I could say that my guild's MM hunters far outclass our BM hunters, but that would be because we don't have any BM hunters.

You happen to be missing 9/10th's of the Marksman Tallent tree. TSA is NOT the only reason to go MM, neither is Silencing shot.

I'm just being critical of people who think they have a handle on this argument and try to make points that are far from robust or unbiased. I'm just hoping that discussion will continue off some of the extremely good points made in the last thread.

Bigblue, nice post, I agree with you to a certain extent. But lets be honest here, if your casters are seriously geared the fuck out with 1100+ spell damage and 2 years experience under their belt you shouldn't be out dpsing them in 25 man raids. I can do it on trash mobs in SSC and be #1 on the meters with a full MM build, but when it comes time for a boss I'll be very lucky if I'm #5-8 on SWS.

About 31/30, (which this post isn't about), you might want to try 38/23 instead. Your LR talent is only giving you 1.4% crit and 84 RAP or so, but you're losing about 200 RAP in its place in-addition-to losing barrage and 1 pt in imp. barrage. Check my current profile. Cheers.

I am merely responding to the question that was asked. He asked why there are Hunters that are not BM, I responded by saying, "Arena." There are a lot of lazy people (like me) who (used to) raid with PvP specs because they're cheap, lazy and value PvP over PvE.

Plus, BM has always been seen as that spec, where only noobs specced into it. Social stigma, if you will, of being a BM hunter.

I would never use Gruul as good or anywhere decent example of damage meters. I had whole raid install newest SW_Stats, and to nobody's surprise we had different results on east and west. I checked prior to the Gruul kill and afterwards sync was enabled and we all had combat log set to 200yds.

Back to the discussion at hand. BM will scale upwards next patch with removal of glancing blows but hunter's HoT won't be enough to keep pet alive during cave in or any other pet killer ability. And fights where bosses are not outright pet killers but do cause you to send your pet in and out you will suffer the dps loss.

What I am leaning towards is bringing 2 hunters with new EW to the raids and upping number of rogues in the raid to 2-4 and see how that dps scales. A lot of fights should become rogue friendly and EW hunter would be aimed at new raid synergy even more so then now.

By the way, has anyone confirmed that pets are indeed affected by new glancing blows? Knowing Blizzard I wouldn't be surprised if they were not.

2.1 will be a good improvement for BM hunters, but seriously, it was not needed to be on top of the dps charts.
I have been an MM up until the new talents came and I immediately switched to BM, because its plain to see that it does more dps in PvE then MM if you are able to manage your pet AND have a healer on your side. Your pet never needs more then a hot, really. I am honestly afraid that 2.1 will make BM more viable for lots of hunters and it might become the dominating build.

You can check my gear, you will see there is not much epic, which is for one reason and that is: blues are better.
I am wearing rouge leather gear and still want the leather shoulder from the chest. Apart from that improvements are rare and come with overproportional effort for negligible gains.
Every epic that I have in my bag comes with more HP and more mana and takes away dps.
I just dont need it. I never die, fully buffed I have enough HP and I dont have a problem with popping 10 or more super mana pots per raid to keep up the dps.

Same goes for the grouping. Having a shadow priest is great for your mana, but its bad for your dps. If you want to be with a spriest, you need to be in the caster group. That in itself is no problem and you might be welcome for your 3% damage buff, but no one helps your dps.

I prefer a group with a warrior, a melee shammy, a feral druid and maybe a rogue for dazing and perfect synergies. Everyone gives and everyone takes (imp mark is much appreciated here). I sure have to pop mana pots, but the buffs of this group push me and the pet so much that I dont want to miss it.

As for your specific question about 25 man raids, let me assure you, there is no difference. With gold you can counter the mana problem and your dps is only about to rise through more pally buffs and judgements. Having 3 pallies eliminates your mana problem altogether, no need for spriests.

Thanks, I will check out this spec. As far as 0/31/30 I was comparing it to BM and saying that BM was not the only choice as most post in the thread had seemed to imply. And most of our casters have about 900-1000 + damage... not sure what it is but to everyones shock (including my own at most times) I really have been able to keep up with them.

One thing I'm interested in seeing are good ballpark figures for a well geared BM hunter. As MM, I could say "Hey, that guy is at the hit cap, has 2100 AP and 22-24% crit, he's got a good setup." As BM, would it be analogous to say "That guy has 1600-1700 AP, is at the hit cap, and has 20-22% crit"? Seems like a lot of armory links I'm turning up have people in that range.

From a mechanics point of view, if I understand things correctly people are using a priority rotation. Now, as I understand it, this means maintaining steady->auto cycle until AS or MS come off cooldown, then replacing a steady with either one. Is this correct or incorrect?

I have a quest for all the BM guys. Do you use steady shot? How does that work with imp aspect of the hawk? Do you just not use steady while imp AotH is up? Or, do you ignore the steady (possibly) slowing down your auto?

I'm almost 100% certain with a BM spec multi-shot isn't even considered in the rotation on single target fights. I would still use Arcane shot though since it ignores mitigation and can do more damage than a mitigated SS/AS. Back on topic though, I'd seriously love to see kill command as an auto-triggered event as soon as I crit. I already have a billion buttons to mash in perfect sequence to DPS effectively.

I just continue using steadyshot. Steady shot also speeds up with imp AoTH (or so I understand - I haven't verified this myself) so in a latency-free situation it doesn't clip any differently than it did before. And yeah, latency becomes a bigger factor now and might make auto slow down a bit, but I'm still doing more dps than not firing steady at all, and I'm still getting a haste benefit from Imp. AoTH.

Edit:
(Based on Howitzer's comment below) I should note that even with imp AoTH my attack speed is > 1.5, so I don't worry about GCD issues. If I ever get Dragonspine trophy I'm going to have to seriously reconsider my shot rotation (or get a slightly slower bow - using a 2.6 base right now)

I don't really know about IAoTH combined with SS and its overall effectiveness. I'm guessing it will really fuck your shot rotations up if you're firing faster than your GBC. Some BM specs I've seen don't even have points in it at all. Thoughts?

EDIT: The other factor I didn't even think about are the Slaying Talents. 3% Damage and 3% critical strike bonus damage on Humanoid Slaying specifically... This tier 1 survival talent replaced FI completely and is up 100% of the time. We all know the majority of all mobs in TBC seem to be Humanoid thus far. This won't be the case in TK / BT / etc, though.

I asked him about this some time ago (when he was gather the mats for the crit scope) and he explained to me that crit was a larger DPS increase for his current setup. I think a lot of it has to do with crit affecting Arcane Shot, but +dmg scopes doing nothing...in addition to the effect of Mortal Shots.

Bigblue, as long as you don't have a weap that's too fast, you can easily fit steadies inbetween autos even when Imp Hawk is up (rapid fire is another question entirely though).
After 2.1, you're going to need to use Viper almost exclusively because steady/KC spam sucks up incredible amounts of mana. So I wouldn't even worry about Imp Hawk.





As far as BM and raiding is concerned in my eyes:

Encounters that are pet friendly..
BM is fantastic for a raid group, probably more so than MM hunters. BM hunters fit nicely into caster groups, which give them a much better chance to be paired with a shadow priest.. which is the single best synergy for hunters right now.

Encounters that aren't pet friendly..
BM shouldn't lose to MM hunter in damage by any significant amount. But BM's group buff and a lot of his utility is gone (can still have imp mark and can still scorpid sting). So an MM spec would definitely be better (though maybe not by much) in a no pet situation.



So then you just have to figure out how many encounters are pet friendly vs how many aren't.
We'll just have to see how much survivability the mend pet and avoidance changes grant us.






I also want to share part of a strat that I use in Gruul's right now because it seems to me that a lot of hunters that would like to go BM just aren't figuring out ways to keep their pets up in encounters where it should be pretty easy to do so.

Right now, your pet gets 100% health back when it's dismissed and re-called. Dismiss pet is a 3 sec cast followed by an instant call pet, which is FAR more efficient to do than using mend pet currently..
HOWEVER
If you out-range your pet, it auto-dismisses. So how can you use that to your advantage?
Call a safezone on the opposite side of the room from the entrance. Put your pet on stay a bit behind the raid before you engage the fight. Have the pet attack gruul as the tanks are running in (but don't use dash/dive, and no pet skills at the start.. you dont' want to beat the tanks to gruul or out-threat the secondary tank at the start or he'll take hateful and die)
When the first ground slam is about to happen, put pet on passive.. he'll run back to the stay spot and dismiss because of range. Then just re-call him after the shatter and attack again.
It's simple strats like this that can make BM spec just fine in raid situations.
You just have to figure them out.

The other thing I was thinking about in 2.1 is the fact that it will take 30 shots to maximize your new Hunter's Mark to 440 RAP. Having 5/5 serpent's swiftness will decrease the time it will take to get you to that max level especially if you're the only hunter in a 25 man raid, (which is quite often the case in my guild).

Correct me if I am wrong, but would that not reset the pets stay position?
I see that working for the first shatter, but as soon as you call pet you would need to resetup his stay position.

random answers:
- BM hunters use replacement cycles with 2.7 and faster weapons: special, auto, special, auto.. etc (where special is steady, auto, multi)

- multishot from a BM is generally a waste of mana on a single target though.

- when imp hawk procs, steady shot's cast time is sped up. most epic weapons are 2.6 or slower, so even with that proc, you can still maintain your shot cycle w/o too many issues

I need to do more research, but for post-patch I'm changing from MM to BM and will be stacking leather agi/ap extensively. a lighter mana burning steady/auto replacement cycle and dropping multishot will help alleviate mana issues. it really seems like this setup will be a good mix of dps and endurance.. just need to math it out more w/ gear availability. i'm almost ready to start believing that a BM in complete leather who FD+drinks (25-35% of their dmg continues while drinking) would do more than a hunter who tried to avoid FD+drink with mail int/mp5 gear.

BM also has fringe benefits:
- BM is much more welcome with a shadow priest than MM, potentially resolving mana issues when in full leather.
- replacement cycles are much more forgiving with your latency unless you are trying to thread a needle with a 2.3 type weapon (not a typical speed for epics though)

My BM rotation is Auto-Steady unless TBW is up, in which case I will use the higher-damage specials (Multi and Arcane) in place of Steadies, since they cost 20% less mana under the effect of TBW.

I also use Multi and Arcane with Rapid fire, since weaving Steadies between every RF Auto is impossible.

I pretty much believe the devs intended BM hunters to use the Auto-Steady predominantly, since it's very mana efficient. The surplus mana to be used for Mends.

I'm not sure what you mean by a auto/special rotation with BM. How can you fit specials in with a 1.95 attack speed?

Here is what my theorycrafting on BM found:
There's hardly a reason to use special shots at all. You can't fit them in properly, they have to replace a steady. They do provide larger DPS, but at a very large cost.

The damage per mana of upgrading a Steady to an Arcane comes out to 0.65 damage per mana, the cost of a multi is 1.35 damage per mana (single target). To give some perspective, Serpent sting has around 4 damage per mana.

Specials are good for the following situation for a BM:
If you are with a Shadow priest
If it is a burst phase
If you have mana near the end of a fight
When you use The Beast Within.

Other than that, you are just wasting mana, and you are better off stacking the AP/crit. The BM build really breaks hunter's reliance on mana. So far the best builds I've found have used iAotH with a 2.6 - 2.7 after accounting for lag. At low latency 2.5 is viable but there's no good guns in that range.

One other interesting thing I turned up, is that the +haste enchants are still viable for the BM build. My spreadsheets showed the +10 haste rating to gloves slightly above +24AP

I've been BM for a while now, been a fan of it since they added serpent's swiftness. By far the most powerful talent we have. There was a lot of talk about BM vs MM in the main hunter thread and I don't think my opinions have changed much since then.

A BM hunter with the right bow (2.7-2.8), using a priority queue will only be about 5-10% behind a MM hunter with a similar bow, or a MM hunter with a slower bow (3.2) who slots 2 specials and delays autos. That 5-10% is easily made up by the buffed pet.

Also I posted this in the hunting hunters thread. If you want to see what a pretty decent full burn rotation looks like as a BM hunter with a 2.8 speed weapon (with lots of haste effects thrown in to complicate things.

Are Cats the new best-BM pets considering the LB nerf last patch? Or any pet with a Gore ability like a Ravager?

That was one of the questions I had. How does a BM use rapid fire effectively? I'm going to be running some numbers on that and looking at how to best combine TBW, Rapid Fire, iAotH, and Trinkets.

One question for the hunter community, what happens when you swap bows in combat? Is there a cooldown on your autoshot?

steady shot *is* a special. auto/special rotations are called replacement cycles. the core cycle is auto/steady, but you replace arcane/multi in as mana allows.

btw, another bonus to BM is that you can sync your best trinket with TBW.

that's part of the beauty of a replacment cycle.. its so simple. since most epics are 2.7 or slower.. when haste effets proc, you continue with your cycle. it would take an effective post-haste weapon speed of about 1.5 + latency to start delaying autoshots.. even then.. its best to continue with your cycle (possibly focusing on instants instead of steady at that point tho).

A cat with Bite and Claw 9 after the glancing change will be pretty close if not a bit better than a windserpent. As of right now it is pretty close just because of the added uptime of FI with a bite/claw pet. Pets have buggy ability refresh/global cools sometimes they can use multiple abilities at once, sometimes not. Overall bite/claw has been able to dump way more focus than I first thought.

On anything that gets stunned or immobilized and triggers the stupid windserpent caster behavior, a cat do better.

As far as a ravager goes I can't really comment, I refuse to level one up from 63 to see.

LOL same here man. There's nothing worse than leveling up a pet at that level to 70. I did it with a wolf at 67 and it was painful.

With Rapid Fire, a 2.7 becomes: 2.7/1.2/1.15/1.4= 1.397 sec. That's too fast, unfortunately. Taking steady out may be the best idea, but once arcane/multi are both on cool down there's not much you can do. You may even have to do the unspeakable and use Serpent Sting (ewwwww). Either way you won't get the same amount of damage out of a rapid fire that a MM/SV would get since taking out steady or delaying auto both hurt DPS a lot.

My mistake, I see what you mean now.

I've been using an Owl for some time now. Screech/Claw instead of Bite/Claw, +7% dps instead of +10%, 0% health adjustment instead of cat's -2%. Apart from the really annoying screeching noise every few seconds, Owls perform pretty well. And the latest rank of Screech is -210 ap to all targets, more than double the previous best rank.

I tamed the red and purple one from Sethekk Halls, and he gets a lot of attention =)

you're missing a lot with that analysis. as important as delayed autoshots is the downtime in your cycle where you are neither casting a special or waiting for the .5 second autoshot tick.

that 1.4 number is a good thing! if it were 1.5 or 1.6 with all those haste effects, then imagine how much time you would spend post-steadyshot, but pre autoshot just waiting around casting nothing. also think about how well imp hawk will fit in since its not as big a buff as rapid fire. and by using arcane/multi replacements during rapid fire, you greatly minimize the effect of the delayed autoshots during rapid fire's duration.

even some of the best MM shot cycles will delay an autoshot by .1 or .2 seconds occasionally, or worse, they will have bigger non-casting downtimes in the auto,steady,auto snippet in their full cycle.

I would go with Ravager pet for Gore and Bite with BM spec. I know they are a bit of glass cannon for a pet but dps is quite a bit higher with them.

Sorry, I'm not sure if we are arguing the same thing. I'm saying BM doesn't benefit much from Rapid Fire. I have no problems with the 2.7 speed and BM, I'm just saying that it doesn't get as much damage out of Rapid Fire as a MM.

That 1.4 isn't a good thing. With 100ms of lag, you are only getting 22.2% out of 40% of your rapid fire. BM wastes almost half of your Rapid Fire Haste if you keep using steady.

I have good latency and even with RF up with full MM I will occasionally miss an autoshot just due to how fast its firing off since I refuse to use a macro for shots. I will just have to try BM in SSC/TK/Gruul/Mag's Lair etc and find out for myself.

Which is why I said I was giving you "part" of my strat. Not going to spoon feed it.
But if you actually think about it for a bit, you should be able to take what I already said and work out an incredibly good/efficient way to keep your pet up and not stoned in gruul.
It's really not that difficult.


You're right that you won't get as much benefit out of Rapid fire if it pushes you below a speed that you can hold a rotation..


But you could simply switch to a slower weapon right before popping RF. (if you had that luxury)

Glad Xbow = 3.2 speed / (1.15 quiver * 1.2 SS * 1.4 RF) = 1.66 speed
YES PLZ!

Now if only I had the time to grind for it

I have a few fundamental questions regarding BM. Like the original poster I have been marks for a while and have been reluctant to give that up, despite a lot of evidence that BM may be the best damage build.

1) What trinkets are best for BM. My preliminary inclination is that you want possibly Daggerspine trophy, Bloodlust Brooch, Abacus of violent odds, or Mark of Conquest.
Which 2 of these would be best? Daggerspine trophy seems really strong if you can combine it with aspect of the hawk and get some nice rolling procs. Bloodlust brooch combined with a 4 minute rapid fire cooldown allows you to have some nice interaction with TBW.

2) What is the best pet? I have a windserpent and a cat. I don't want to level a ravager only to find out they are not very good. An owl also provides good utility and good damage.

3) What macros are good for Beast Mastery come 2.1? I saw one floating around that macro'ed steady and auto together that also had kill command, and lightning breath in it on cast random.

4) Seems some people suggest stacking just AP and Agi. Is this really the best? It seems like you want to run Imp Hawk, not viper.

5) What is the ideal bow? I have both Sunfury and Gladiator's. It seems if you had daggerspine trophy and imp Hawk there's a good chance of having one haste effect beyond Serpent's Swiftness. Does this justify Gladiators or is Sunfury still better?

5) BM seems terrible for 5v5 arena (possibly good for 2v2). Is this true. It just seems without the burst and without reliable interupts the build would not perform at a high level.

I'm sorry that I posted mostly questions.

It's not as bad as most people let on. 99% of your Hunter abilities are the same. BM is less susceptible to being gayed around pillars, since your pet will chew hard on them wherever they run. BM is at a disadvantage on the pillars in Blade's Edge. It's a trade off.

It's true that BM is under-represented in top 5v5 teams, but you should check out the hunter "Discipleh," who is usually specced 41/5/15 (not at the time of this post, however) and runs a top-5 5v5 team in his battlegroup.

Consider that team's class matrix, and what role a BM hunter would play within that.

I think the detail you're missing is that haste effects Steadies casting time.
Under full BM haste of 2.22 Steady will fire in .67 sec.
So, even with the .5 animation delay between shots, you don't 'clip' auto.

Now, the snag to that much haste is that the GCD is still 1.5
If you continue putting a special between every auto, you WILL start clipping significantly.
The simple solution is to only use specials between about 2/3rds of your autos.
I'll leave it up to other folks to do all the math on the effect that has on DPS.

My *guess* is that with RF up and skipping a special every 3rd auto will net roughly the same dps, but you'd be firing fewer specials, thereby saving a little mana.
Assuming I'm right, just think of RF as mana conservation while maintaining full dps

The Iron Colonel asks the question I want to know, too. How do we know "wtf we are doing" as a BM hunter? Having never been one, I don't really have a good idea how to guage my own gear's suitability, nor how to look at someone's armory and know that they're geared well versus poorly.

With Marks, as long as they have decent +hit, ~20-22% crit, and 2000-2300 AP, I figure they're un-noobish.
For Survival, I'm looking for ~25%+ crit (more as gear permits of course ) and a truckload of agility.
For Beast Mastery, how do I analyze this?

I think I have a handle on making a good BM spec vs a poor one, but gear is throwing me for a loop.

What about Efficiency VS Imp Hunter's Mark? If you're firing 20% faster with more Quick Shot procs and losing more mana is it not better to have your pet lose 110 AP so you can continue to fire off steadys?

The thing about Mark of Conquest is that you are attacking very fast with low mana shots. a 2.70 with iAotH hits every 0.906 seconds on average. At an average of 15mana per hit (based on 10% proc rate) that's over 80mp5. It's more mana than Aspect of the Viper. I'd definitely Go with the Broach as well, since it will go so nicely with TBW.

Don't base your bow speed around a trinket. 2.6 is the best, 2.7 is ok. 2.8 and above has the disadvantage of only getting 7 hastened shots inside an iAotH proc instead of 8 and it will lose you about .5% haste. Also you will get in fewer steady shots.

i think I misread your post as a dismissal of BM due to rapid fire's issues, not an isolated comment on rapid fire itself. by 1.4 being a good thing, i meant that it means you are near optimal for a replacement cycle for the time you are not using rapid fire.. which is more important.

rapid fire also mucks with MM rotations, however its harder to calculate to what degree. unfortunately the state of hunters right now is that no shot cycles really account for non-haste states and haste states without introducing clipping and/or 'waiting time' outside steady/auto casting states in at least one of those states.

if swapping range weapons doesn't initiate the global cooldown, then that may be the best solution for both specs.

I'm guessing BM is for low-latency hunters who are very good at twitch gameplay then? Since MM has a lot more wiggle-room for error. From what you posted above you're stating that the Gladiator Xbow would actually lose PVE dps in shot rotations over a longer duration, correct?

I have the framework for a Pet DPS calculator. Is there a good resource kicking arround that has pet damage formulae like base damage etc? Petopedia has plenty of formulae but no DPS ones.


If that's true, it's really too bad. One of the hunter's core strengths is great burst DPS.

Ya, the leather is nicer for DPS no doubt. But remember that pets get 35% of your Armour, so leather is more of a trade-off than pre-2.1. I'll still be stacking lots of leather, but I'm not going to trash my mail.

Definitely a good idea in any burst phase like Curator. I need to test what happens when you swap bows mid-combat. Depending on how much it disrupts your shot-timer, this may be the way to use Rapid Fire properly as a BM.

I'm inclined to say it's the other way around.

A MM Hunter would probably be using a Auto,Steady,Arcane/or/Multi,Auto,Steady style rotation.
With a 2.9 weapon and no haste beyond 15% for quiver, there is zero 'wiggle room' when you're putting 2 specials between autos.

The BM spec would only ever be putting 1 special between autos, and most of the time he'll have as much as a half sec of 'wiggle room'.

edit:
Matter of opinion, I suppose, but I tend to think of BM as the steady dps spec for Hunters.
Less reliance on crits, more on stacking AP and high shot speeds.

My understanding is that Mark of Conquest has a hidden cooldown timer of 19 seconds.

As BM, with a 2.6 speed bow and firing a shot (auto or steady) approximately every 1.95 seconds (ideally 1.88 but I've got some lag and I'm just spamming a macro rather than deal with the hassle of manually timing latency while also trying to watch my pet etc) I got about 31 mp/5 from Mark of Conquest. This was based on WWStats on a bugged Gruul kill, so it was pretty much a tank-n-spank.

With BM, the X-bow is not very good. You don't shoot nearly as many steady shots. Rotations are all about designing good ones then finding the right bow to fit them.

Lag and wiggle room depends on your rotation and bow speed. I currently use a pretty intense MM rotation that I could never keep up without low lag and the /castsequence macros (yes, I use those). My BM rotation is going to be a lot easier. But it's nothing to do with the actual rotations themselves, it's how my bow fits into it.

My 3.00 clips my current rotation and it very tight, but that's because I should really be using a 3.10 or a 3.20. But I don't have any of those because I'm poor and lazy.

With a 2.70-2.30 and BM my future rotation will have good slack. But that's because there aren't any good 2.50 speed bows to choose from which would be ideal.

How tight the rotations are depends more on the bow itemization than the actual rotations.

I'd like to see more of this, It's not all that obvious which special you were using in between your autoshots. I wanna see the mob your damaging, and an swstats window for you dps, and group dps percentage. Then I could really make good use of that video as a comparison between MM and BM. Also, was your pet alive the whole fight? I assume you still have the original footage, maybe you could post another version of the vid.

Or maybe another BM hunter has some good footage of them dpsing a boss, or even just raid trash, I'd really like to take a look at exactly a BM hunter would do in game. This would be the best way for me to start comparing the dps differences of BM vs MM short of actually respecing and learning it myself.

It looks like he is just rotating Steady Shot and Auto Shot while managing the speeds of Quick Shot procs in between in addition to Bloodlust! Craziness, indeed. Seriously gonna try BM and come back with some SWStats and possibly WWS figures for you all.

Here's our most recent Fathom-Lord kill from last night with a 38/23 spec: http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070425-Karathress/
Then compared to Tidewalker, (where AOE is total king of course) http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070425-Tidewalker/

I'll post WWS results of these two fights next week with a 41/20/0 spec and see the difference. =)

I think he used Arcane shot and multishot too, but I really have to guess. I've got a BM version of myself on the test server, but there's no way I'd be able to take full advantage of Beast Mastery on my first attempt at it. So I'm looking for someone with plently of experience playing BM to show me a typical fight(boss fight, trash pulls, I don't care, just something so I can start to make some comparisons).

I personally don't like all the numbers people sometimes use to make the arguments for BM, maybe it's just because I'm a sceptic, but I'd much prefer either my own personal experience, or short of that, a visual representation of it to help persuade my own opinion.

If people are interested to see how BM hunters stand against other dps classes I can post my wws log from tonight, maybe you can take some conclusions out of that concerning rotations and pet usage.
It was a bad night btw, many deaths for nothing

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=mpizerirbwyta&m

Edit: Yes, the mage is bad...

I decided to look at Shade since Curator and Netherspite have lots of things that cause your DPS to have high spikes.
Wow. I have to ask, what buffs group setup you're using.

Just looking at pet damage there's a weird disparity (and I'm BM too)
Sylvester had 29 non-crit hits for an average of about 434 damage.
Peerless (my cat) had 30 non-crit hits for an average of 237. This number is roughly the same across all 5 shade attempts (it was a bad night)

I was wearing some stamina gear, but not so you'd expect a disparity like that.
You're an orc, so you'd get some advantage there, but not that big.

I note you've got some elixirs up but the effect is much smaller on the pet.

Any ideas what could be causing such a huge buff? Does Windfury work on them?

(Your gear provides more DPS than mine but I have to make sacrifices for mp/5 because we have no shadow priest and I don't feel like chain chugging potions - but again this diff shouldn't be such a huge pet difference).

Having spent the last couple of months raiding with a BM hunter, I've been convinced of how amazing BM is for quite a while. It's not a question of him outdamaging MM hunters, he can outdamage the mages and rogues too, if we give him a shadowpriest and TSA. Granted the mages aren't at the 1100+ spellpower levels, but at 800-900 damage he is quite competitive. I can't comment how good our other DPS classes are compared to your guilds, but I'd like to think they're fairly good.

I've stayed MM however, since I'm partly too lazy to regear myself for BM (he stacks AP, and has nearly as much AP as I do with TSA, and since some recent upgrades to his gear equal/better hit and crit), and partly because I still like some MM features for the casual PvP I do. Also I never really wanted to be BM with Steelhawk, but I might try with the Gladiator's Xbow. Every time I've tried BM on a ptr, it's been without raid buffs, in my normal gear, and never felt satisfactory.

Howitzer, I'd expect your observation about BM being for low-latency high-FPS players to be true, but having seen fraps of Maelgwn play and noting how incredibly crappy his computer is, I don't think that's necessarily the case.

If you are speccing BM, my recommendations would be to pick up enough AP to be around 1900 RAP, before worrying too much about other stats. And know that every AP consumable you use is extra desirable, since it buffs your pet's DPS as well. Nag people to buff you and your pet, it's worth it.

The only utility downsides I see are:
i. likely no hawk eye, so things can be rough when pulling or finding a spot on gruul
ii. even more dependent on shadow priests, since mana expenditure in full burn is higher, and pet death is a bigger hit to DPS until you res it.

I probably shouldn't be posting other people's videos, but here's an old video of one of our BM hunters, also on Aran (good fight for pet DPS):

http://video.google.ca/url?docid=520...ioVSSow7lZLSAA

I don't know how useful it is for seeing what he's doing, I spaz out every time I watch it from how abysmal his FPS is. I've been bugging him to make a better one.

That's a start I guess, but I want to see some 25 man Raid footage of a BM hunter, I'm not interested in seeing the absolute best pulls of the night for that hunter either(people keep mentioning, "it was a bad night"), more of an average is better I wanna see how he works within the raid. SSC Trash is what I have in mind, even just one pull of trash, there's far more information for me in seeing how he starts and ends the dpsing of each mob than in wws logs, or in swstats meters.

Prior to going casual these past two weeks, I was BM for about three weeks (basically when I put up the post with my BM vs. MM damage testing on Dr. Boom, I didn't bother to spec back just to test out BM in actual raids). I easily took either the #1 or #2 spot for Hydross, Magtheridon, and Gruul when I had a Shadow Priest available. This, of course, includes pet damage in the total as well. I didn't stack any "non-mana" gear (i.e. leather); I wore what I have in my Armory for the most part. And yes, I still had to drink mana potions and use mana regen consumables to maintain my mana pool even with a Shadow Priest.

-----

I've done some very preliminary testing on the PTR in Blasted Lands with a 5/20/36 "raiding" build. The change to Kill Command is both a boon and a curse. You can't actually use it whenever you want primarily because you still can't cast it while casting Steady Shot, which means you only have roughly 50% (probably less) of your shot rotation time to actually hit the button. Also, it's not always on cooldown or available to hit during those moments, either. So if you refuse to put it in a macro (like me, because it never works properly and just screws up my timing), what you end up doing is mashing the button pretty much whenever you aren't casting Steady, which is a pretty big chore when you're trying to time your shots within the span of milliseconds. But while I found you really don't use it every 5 seconds, you do end up using it enough that it makes our mana issues even worse than they already are. Even with Mark of Conquest and the ~10% mana return I got from Thrill of the Hunt, I was running out of mana in roughly two minutes flat. I'd really hate to see how bad it is with other specs, where you have absolutely no mana returns from TotH.

Well, if you are asking about the pet the answer is easy and more so its easy for everyone, because I dont "handle" the pets dps apart from the grouping.

As I said, I group with a warrior for the battle shout, with a melee shammy for bloodlust and his 10% AP buff, his agi and strength totem, and he also has something to increase nature damage, which I forgot about, but it seems to help my pets LB.
Normally I also have this feral druid in the group for 5% crit and some heals, but for Shade he switched to his warlock, so we had the easy mode with two warlocks on the elementals.

Adding all the multipliers a BM pet has, this sums up to some insane damage for the Pet.
This fight wasnt even 100% representative, because in the last minute Shade repositioned to the wall during a blizzard and my pet died, so there was some major dps lost.

As for the comment on "a bad night", that was only true for some members, not for me.

@Madscorl
Believe me, there is no way to do anything different on SSC trash then on just about any other trash. WWS has this nice feature, where you can pick any participant of any fight, lets say a trash mob and check his death. In his death view you see the last 30 seconds of combat log in that fight, which for trash mostly means its the full fight.
As in here:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...wyta&a=9&dth=7
In that place you get all the infos you need about what each player did.
In the near future the WWS guy will implement a complete combat log for each single player without the actions of other players. That will help a LOT to see exactly what other players are doing. Apart from that I dont think its possible to get anymore infos on any given fight.

For me WWS is the single best invention ever, because it shows every little mistake someone does in a raid. Not only dd's, but also tanks and healers. If hunters tell you they are doing everything they can and still have mediocre dps, you can just check out their logs. Have a look at their weapon speed, calculate how much shots have to be done in what time with that speed and check what they do instead. If people are playing with the blizz interface and miss about a second on each shot you got your 20-30% dps loss right there. And for the first time in 3 years now you can proove it.

To clarify, I reached my DPS without ever getting buffs for my pet beyond raid-wide buffs. Since I needed the Shadow Priest, I was almost always put in the healer/caster group instead. I'd imagine that if you tailor-made a group such that the BM hunter got a warrior, a feral druid, an enhancement shaman (dropping GoA, of course), and a shadow priest, you'd see some pretty crazy DPS. Of course, that would never happen.

Exactly, you will never get the shadow priest in this group because it makes no sense. He doesnt benefit from anything but my 3% and I would be the only one to benefit from him. So SP's are always in the caster group for better synergies, and thats where I dont want to be, because I cant get all group buffs but only mana and that can be countered with pots.

Quick question on mana usage:

Last night I tried out BM for the first time (only Karazhan, so nothing too tricky in terms of pet handling) and I noticed that I was not really using that much mana. For example, whereas before on Prince (w/o a shadowpriest) I was chugging fel mana pots every cooldown, this time I only used 1.

My strategy was essentially to maintain the steady->auto rotation and just manage my cooldowns and haste procs without clipping (so I wasn't using arcane or multishot). I realize this is a low mana consumption rotation, but I'm not really seeing a huge benefit in wedging in a few arcanes for steadies throughout the fight, damage-wise. So my question is: why do I keep reading about BM being hard on mana? Am I doing something different/wrong?

I disagree on putting a BM hunter in a shadow priest's group. You just don't benefit that much relative to other classes from a shadow priest. BM doesn't have the capability to burn through huge mana for huge damage relative to other classes. If you have a shadow priest, give the slot to a healer and ask them to throw the occasional hot on your pet. Keeping up mend pet constantly is a pretty big drain on your DPS.

I'd much rather be in the melee group, especially with Leader of the Pack. You are going to do much better stacking the raw damage. One of the reasons for this, is that a BM hunter has 2 strong characters that both benefit from group buffs. Rogues get 125AP from TSA, but BMs get 125RAP and 125AP on the pet. It's a very large buff to our group synergy since we essentially get twice the benefit from raid buffs.

On Gear:
I need to double check my math, so this is preliminary. The math leans more towards crit when compared to MM, but that could simply be because MM is very biased towards AP and I'm using numbers from my build with a very bad (15%) crit rate. Still it seems that BM leans towards AP compared to Blizzard's itemization costs. Does anyone have formulae for pet's AP especially how the pet damage modifiers affect it.

What? Really?! But... I... I'm going to take my ball and go home now.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=eyuf4mecsy3fe&m

Quick Summary:

Ignore the fact that the damage spread between me and the rest of the raid is so vast >.>

Last night's Prince kill, 892 dps over 5 minutes, 41/20/0. I potted up to simulate 2.1 level buffs; had on an elixir of major agility and a mana oil, and a flask of relentless assault to basically simulate the new hunter's mark. Had Leader of the Pack, prot tank Battleshout for my pet, kings/wisdom/might for myself, kings/might for my pet.

It was a pretty easy fight, tank/melee only had to shift once and only about 10 yards, same for the ranged/casters. Of particular interest are the mana returns from my Mark of Conquest, Blessing of Wisdom, and Judgement of Wisdom; if I ever am in a situation where JoWisdom has that much uptime again, I'll swap out of Mark of Conquest. I only Super Mana potted once, and I don't even think I would have needed too. Feels like I was a little lax on using Arcane Shot/Multishot/Scorpid Sting, so I think my dps and mana consumption could both have been higher.


Of course, Prince is a great-case scenario. I never have to move apart from dodging infernals, my pet can't get Enfeebled, and Prince doesn't really have any significant AoE. But this is a good example of how BM spec CAN produce good numbers,

What are primary stats for BM? I understand that you may want AP instead of Agility and I know you can sacrifice Int gear for other stats. Or is that wrong way of thinking?

In general what is the gear I should consider for effective BM spec stat-wise?

PS.

Removed this question from another hunter thread as it belongs here.

OK! Here it is folks. Web Stats for Hydross kill, Lurker kill, (no pet really), and my 1st solid Vashj attempt in SSC as a BM hunter: (I respecced last night to test)

Hydross damage breakdown:
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070426-Hydross/ (Yesterday as BM)
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070402-HydrossKill/ (Me last week as Marks spec)

Lurker damage breakdown: (actually this is w/o being able to use the pet on the boss only a little on the spawns and it is vs a full Marksman Hunter who I see as my equal or close to it)
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070426-Lurker/ (Yesterday as BM)
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070405-LurkerKillMerged/ (Me last week as Marks spec)

Lady Vashj best attempt:
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070426-VashjTry2/

Sadly, I don't have totals for all night overall damage dealt including trash etc. Let me tell you guys a couple of things from what I have experienced so far from just 1 night of raiding as BM. First of all, holy shit was it fun. It took a lot more micro-management of the pet since I was always concerned that it stayed alive. I notice in WWS that it had a horrible miss rate of about 16% so I pumped in 2 points into Animal Handler which should definitely make a difference in raiding in the future. Our marks hunter, Mr. Archaos, was seriously depressed last night after seeing a BM hunter tear shit up. I can't begin to tell you how surprised I was and other people around me who laughed as I turned big and red only to then send me tells later saying "holy shit man, wtf?" because the meters showed some definite difference. On trash especially I was almost always #1 by quite a bit. This wasn't using flasks or anything.

I did request buffs from the paladins for BOK/BOM on the pet which I'm sure made a big difference. Overall, I am absolutely loving it so far. The pet is basically my DOT which can crit and go off way faster than a lock or sps DOT can. Hopefully the numbers up there shed some light on the difference between MM/BM and please don't take this as a "this is better or worse" post because it isn't. I'm simply someone who has seen a very different way to play the class and am enjoying it quite a bit so far. Ask anyone that knows me and they'll say "Howitzer would never go BM", well, that just changed.

Actually I'd like to thank all of you guys who replied to this thread mostly. The comments and insights here are exactly why I bother coming to this forum in the first place. Cheers.

Heh, I'm glad you enjoyed BM. I've been having a blast with it for the last few weeks; it's leaps and bounds different from 1.0 MM raiding. I wanted to ask, though, how can you get WWS reports to show pet's glancing rates?

I'm glad to see your experience was a positive one. These should provide good data points, but I have a couple questions:
1) Can you post the build you used? Seems like BM raid specs are pretty much cookie cutter, but you discussed putting 2 points into animal handler (I have 1 in AH and couldn't find a way to squeeze another in without pulling 1 from SS).

2) Can you discuss the rotation you used? I tried out BM recently using only an auto->steady rotation and noticed a large increase in dps over MM, but I'd like to improve that if possible.

3) For reference, what were your stats while raid buffed?

4) It appears you're using an owl (screech shows up in WWS). Is there a reason NOT to use, say, a cat or WS (who may provide more damage while acting as an effective focus dump)?

For some reason, the EU Armory times out on me every time I try to look at his talent spec. Would someone mind exporting his build to one of the various talent calculators? I'm also in the midst of making the MM->BM switch and I'm still playing with my options.

One of my questions relates to the importance of Mortal Shots for BM hunters. Slotting in a complete tier 2 set (I've only recently dusted off my hunter as I rerolled a shaman for the guild), dropping Mortal Shots is a loss of only about 30 DPS based on Cheeky's spreadsheet. Dropping it would allow taking both Beast Within and both points of Animal Handler (regaining about 10 DPS from a second point) along with the Hawkeye talent, which I've frankly grown used to over my years of MM playing. I'd also then be able to consider dropping Rapid Fire in favor of one of the Slaying talents (about 20 DPS increase for the particular racial class) or Catlike Reflexes.

Edit: Additional question - do we know yet what the glancing blow mechanics are being changed to? And just to confirm, bite/claw are not considered white damage, so can't be glancing blows?

I'm not sure about that, mate. You can login Turalyon horde and talk to Kuya. He is our WWS guy.

My profile: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...yon&n=Howitzer

I found that using Multi-Shot on single targets was no longer desirable whatsoever since I wasn't marks. I did, however, use it when bloodlust was up and rapid fire and quick shots procced because holy damn autoshot itself was like a machine gun. So basically I'd squeeze off instant cast shots whenever they were up.

As far as spec, I removed 1 point from Frenzy because with 80% chance it was almost always active. I took the points out of Spirit Bond because it was less than impressive, let me explain...

Over the course of a 10 minute boss fight the spirit bond talent gave my pet roughly 8000 hit points. This is not exactly acceptable or even warrants the spending of 2 points into it. I am almost always grouped with a shadow priest that can heal that amount back to the pet 50x faster and if really necessary I will pull the pet back and mend it or bandage it. I decided instead to put the points into Handler which is basically a 4% boost in damage since it will miss less.

Using the Sunfury Bow I had no problem managing Serpent's Swiftness WITH the Quick Shots procs and weaving Steady / Auto with the occasional Arcane in between. I was not starving for mana so I wasn't too conscious on shot use or mana consumption at all. The one thing I have to get used to is not using multi shot on single targets. (Thats what I get for being MM for forever.) =) Also Effeciency vs Improved Hunter's Mark. I came to the conclusion that the 110 AP for the pet was not as important as it was for me to maintain my mana pool for constant steady shots because of long fights as a raider. Even with a Shadow priest it CAN become taxing on your mana pool eventually. Therefore, I chose to go with 5/5 Effeciency.

Raid buffed stats when I popped a flask, had elixir of major agi, onslaught, ravager dog, bom / bok / motw / etc. I had about 2800 RAP with about 26% crit and hit rating at about 136.

The other thing someone mentioned above was the importance of Mortal Shots vs Hawk Eye. In my opinion, the lack of 6 yards is noticeable, however, I would not even consider ANY build whether it be BM/MM/SURV without the inclusion of Mortal shots at max rank. It is absolutely a must.

Why did you use an Owl? Because I didn't have a cat trained. I had a wolf, owl from Sekketh halls, and a wind serpent. I didn't bring the wind serpent because Hydross is immune to nature damage on the nature phase. I didn't take the wolf because it's DPS isn't as high as the owl. But, I assure you, I now have a Cat. I might even level up a ravager when I have more free time.

Interesting, but the numbers on the Hydross kill as MM really worry me.

For starters, how do you have more steady shots than auto shots? Also, it only shows a recorded 16 arcane shots and 11 multi shots. Judging from your other posts I think it's safe to assume that your normal cycles are much better than that, so you might want to check to see whether or not your information was recorded correctly for that.

Also, even a MM hunter can have his pet out, so you're only hurting yourself by not having it out when you were MM in that fight.

In Howitzer's defense, thing's were a bit crazy on that Hydross kill. For the past few weeks we had been using the 80 > dead Nature tanking strat, this was our first night that we switched over to the way he is "supposed to be done". I'm sure it took a lot of adjustment by everyone, and with him switching specs, and strats, he may have been trying to watch other things and not give his full attention to his shot rotation, etc.

Auto+steady and the casual arcane shots when moving around and the casual max rank multi-shots to burn your mana when you know that you're not going to run oom.

I think the MM Hydross isn't as accurate because I was running around keeping NR aura up for the MT. I was also not with an SP that night and couldn't use anything but SS really due to mana use.

I'm actually too interested to test out BM, now. Was just thinking if Wrathtide Longbow is better than Wolfslayer for the good old auto/steady castsequence. Should be 2.22 speed with BM spec and if Lootwalker gun is 2.26 and it's the best" weapon speed I'd imagine Wrathtide performing pretty well.

Then again, fuck it. I have over 10k gold I'll just spec BM and go to spend some time testing dps with both in Blasted Lands. :p

One thing actually, 4 or 5 points in frenzy? Could imagine 4 in next patch with CR but havent found the theorycraft bit myself for pre 2.1 :/

I copied Polina's spec and changed it a little bit to get improved revive since I found it quite useful. I really believe animal handler is a must esp if you raid often. 4/5 Frenzy worked great for me.

WWS has gone through a few updates to include pet damage and respective glancing rates.
Make sure to assign each hunter pet an owner. I usually "auto update" actors and manually look to see if there are any new pets or raid members that are not in my table. WWS is usually pretty good at catching the pet's owner, but if not you can manually select it from the drop down menu.

Hope that helps.

Good call on 4/5 Frenzy. I think I'll change that in my build as well. Which I guess would make it exactly the same as your build. =P

I'm glad you finally pulled the trigger and tried out BM. I was shocked when I first raided with it a week ago as well, and I'm really enjoying it. Your reactions (and those of your guildies) in the thread towards the top of page 4 are very similar to mine. I have the Mage and 'lock class leaders saying "nerf BM" in officer chat all the time now!

Edit - Our builds won't be the same since I have 5/5 Imp Mark. I like this for my pet of course, but the reason I take it is for the raid. If I can give 110 more AP to 5 or so melee DPSers, it's worth it to drink another mana pot during a boss fight.

Kuya, you never updated the Hydross merge! ><

Testing with http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=mxbh0xgRwuVoVxbRV now

I prefer spirit bond over increased health tbh. :P

If you are raiding there is very little reason for going with Armor over improved revive.

Imp revive is extremely handy when your pet dies, and with the changed to cleave in 2.1 the armor will really only benefit you if you are soloing/5mans.

More health, however, will definitely help you out more in raiding.

Spirit bond I do like and I wish I could fit it in when I spec BM. My guild has one semi-active shadow priest and thats it. When he's on he is with mages, not hunters.
But 8k over 10 minutes is really pretty piss poor =(

I just wanted to clarify this part a little bit. Are you saying when you get bloodlust/rapid fire/quickshots stacked you STOP casting steady shot and just cast auto/arcane/ms, or you replace your steadies with arcanes and MS when they come off of CD? What I've been doing so far when I get my attack speed down to ~1.0 with stacked haste is just spam the everloving hell out of my steady key and try to keep up with my autos. Usually I clip a few, but I also fit a lot of steadies in, too.

Valkyrus it's mainly because it's not 2.1 yet.

I'll be switching the points to imp revive when patch hits.

I just stopped casting steady because I was clipping Autoshots left and right. So in its place I was using arcanes and multis instead until the haste effects became manageable again for proper rotations.

Just respecced BM, almost did last night while reading this thread, definatly did after seeing those numbers, Howitzer. Thanks for the info.

What kinda rotation were you using in SSC last night? 2 Steadies, 1 Arcane, 3 Steadies w/ any haste?

So, what kind of pet do you guys think is best for raiding as a BM hunter? Please also say why you think it is the best (skills/stat modifiers/etc.)
Also, will you be putting points in (the new 2.1) imp mend pet?

I still haven't seen anything that has really convinced me BM is so great, though I'm not foolish enough to doubt its potential. I think it also has a lot to do with the player and how they want to play it. I don't imagine BM being nearly as strong as Marks in 5v5, but it'd be amazing in 2v2 (which is fun but not where you really go after your points). I've also always been a stickler for focusing on myself and watching my 3 bars to perfect my rotation/cycle.

I think what is nice, is Blizz is really trying to make all three trees viable in raiding situations. There will be one that stands out as the strongest, but all 3 will be viable. The only thing that sucks is that our itemization is by no means geared towards allowing the three different specs (ie not strong swing towards int, crit rating, or agi). It's starting to look more and more like those "druid" leather pieces with 15 of every single stat, then ap and +spell dmg. They need to give us options according to our spec.

I did make a post similar to what you're saying in regards to different types of tiered sets for hunters since the 3 trees require different types of stat allocations. I put the post in the "Top questions and concerns on 2.1 PTR" thread. (Who knows if the devs even care to read it?)

Anyways, you're very right in that it doesn't matter what damn spec you are as long as you really understand your class, come prepared, and know how to play well. If you can do all that any way you spec will shine. This thread was specifically aimed at 25 man raiding as a BM spec which isn't really discussed much. You'll see BM hunters rant and rave all over the place on "I'm #1 dps", then you see they run 5 mans and their guild is stuck on Curator... That isn't a very credible source of information.

I'll keep posting my WWS results in the coming weeks to give some comparisons on DPS over boss fights and trash and let people come up to their own conclusions. I'm not going to shove anything down anyone's throat, (unless its Bazz's *wink*).

Here are the stats from last nights HKM/Gruul kill and first night of attempts on Mag. I am spec'd 0/31/30. I hope to post soon a comparison night of raiding where I am BM to show how BM works at my gear level (below howitzer's by a significant amount). As you can see I was #2 behind a mage, maybe BM will make me #1?

Great thread so far. I was BM for the first part of TBC and a few runs into Kara. Once I moved to Gruuls and Heroics, I went for MM with enough in survival for imp trap durations. This is making me itchy to go back and work on BM though.

First thing I'd like to do though, is run some of my own practice tests on Dr. Boom so I can solidify my shot rotation now as it stands. That leads me to the big question. What mod should I be using to track my dps? My hits vs misses, % of actual crit and all that? I have SW Stats for the raid, but am looking for something that will focus on my own personal stats. And will it track the 'dps' I see hunters talking about where they say 'I pushed 800 dps on <whatever>'? (And what is that dps anyway? I assume its actual dps, including crits, and haste effects and the like, and not just the paperdoll assumed dps)

I'd get an autoshot cast bar mod and use FuBar_DPS to show your DPS during fights as well. SW Stats can show you a breakdown of your shot rotations as you do them and you can even start up your own WWS combat log each time to show you a true breakdown of absolutely everything everyone does in a raid. Its a very nice tool to keep helping you improve yourself.

As far as shot rotations go, its really something that I believe shouldn't be set in stone. Situations in fights change dynamically all the time and you have to fluidly adapt your shot choices on the fly without even thinking to max your dps. If you're constantly counting in your head: "ok now I need to cast this after 3 of these", you're already in the hole imo.

IMO this is the big problem with hunters in TBC. I have been trying to explain this to the other hunters in my guild but they want a set rotation that they can always follow. This ideology sets apart mediocre hunters and great hunters (at least imo.)

Thanks Howitzer !

My dps in raids has been alright so far, but I am not convinced I've mastered things since the mechanic change and TBC. I want to do better than I am. My biggest problem is that I'm new to these forums and I was fed hunter forums garbage for a while. So the Dr.Boom test is just so I can practice on the different things I've read about here.

Currently, I use multi, arcane, steady, with auto's between, and the priority going to multi and arcane when they are up. Last night, Mmm. Had feral druid and shadow priest in my group for Gruuls and that made me so happy. (And the pants dropped for me yay!) But yeah, I wanna see what I'm doing and see if I'm doing the right thing. :p

Completely agreed. People are too used to the aimed shot rotations of old, and just haven't learned to adjust. Being a good hunter now requires a lot of intuition and just the ability to judge the situation for yourself, and understand how to best time your shots.

I used 3 bars. My autoshot cast bar (Big Trouble = best in the world), ECB with a lag meter to gauge my steadys, and then of course Kharthurs to track my stings (scorpid on boss fights) and cooldowns. That's me though, I'm very technical. Another guild member who is an excellent hunter judges his shots based on the sound of his bow. He listens and recognizes the audio queues and uses that to judge when to shoot his next shot. I can do the the same just by watching my bars or watching the animation of the bow.

All that basically means is that to be a good hunter now, you have to learn your hunter. Any set rotation or whatever will just screw you up. And for those hunters using /castsequence macros, shame. They're a crutch that hold people back and in all honesty do no allow for your maximum potential because they lack the judgment that we often have to use in timing our shots.

Did some testing tonight..

Stuff used:

Major mageblood, blessing of wisdom and 2x mana oils

Also a few judgements which I managed to beg from my brother who is watching tv. :p

Wouldnt worry about mana to much, didnt go oom at all and played safe so chugged fel mana pots as well.

No dps consumables / blessings were used on me or pet. Used vendor arrows for both tests.

Results with Wolfslayer (28 crit rating): http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=6yxnrwlzh3tm3&a=0

Results with Wrathtide (10 dmg):
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=fpa2bv2ckbtt3&a=0

Got a bit higher crit rate on the go with Wrathtide and procs are fairly even. One thing to note was that Wrathtide obviously used a lot less mana which is pretty good. Dunno which one I'd use in raids though..

Think I had a little bit higher average latency on the test with Wrathide (read: 50 -> 75 maybe)

Dunno, maybe Sunfury would be the way to go because of the weapon dps and higher stats if it ever drops.

Still not sure whether to go survival or BM though, roughly the same dps on both after you take in account the glancing blows and misses. BM might be a tiny bit more dps but pet can always die etc, so its hard choice.

I might just try both after the patch and see which one I enjoy more and then make my choice.

Hope thise tests help you guys a bit. =)

Oh, http://armory.wow-europe.com/#charac...ie+Peak&n=Osse .

Point taken. But it leaves me a little confused also. If you dont have some kind of rotation or plan, dps plunges, but if you stick to it too rigidly, dps also plunges. Obviously, hunters need to do more than just afk-autoshoot (and you can tell them easily when you look at meters) so, my next question is, what tips can you offer to figure it all out? When you speak of learning to best time your shots, and which ones, what factors go into making that decision?

And I'm pretty sure I base my shot timing off my bow sound, like your friend, because if my sound glitches, I completely freak out because I feel like I am driving without all four wheels.

Yeah, obviously you have to have some time of shot plan. My auto shot timer has tenths of seconds on the timer, but after a while, you more learn to judge your shots by just the appearance of the cast bar and don't really have to look at your actual time on the shot.

I always open with a multi, arcane, auto, steady. After that, it's just fluid. Steady if you're at the beginning of a bar with no instant up. If you have a 1 sec cooldown on an instant, go ahead and try to string a steady. The number one thing I have against /castsequence macros besides the fact that they're lazy is that they will not fire a steady no matter what if it will interfere with your next auto. If I've got 1.3 seconds before my next auto shot, I don't mind losing .2 seconds to string in an steady for an extra 650 or so dmg.

Multi shot always takes precedence in my cycles because it is the strongest shot. It's also best to try and fit both your instants in between the same auto shot if you can (this obviously won't happen every time, but when the timing is right, do it). One of the biggest things is considering sever lag for your steady shots. You actually should start casting your steady about .2 o.3 seconds before your auto shot fires (depending on your latency) to maximize your efficiency. As I said, I'm sure you could map out all my shots and see the pattern, but I don't go by that. Over time, you just develop your own cycles and it feels natural.

I mentioned Big Trouble earlier also. Here is a link to it:

http://www.wowinterface.com/download...igTrouble.html

It is honestly the best auto shot timer I've encountered. I customize it , place it over my cast bar, and have it display only my auto shot cast bar.

I use Big Trouble as well.

I've switched Little Trouble (same developer) mod, from zhunter mod. I use chronometer for stings but I am not familiar with ECB or Kharthurs.

Next patch I have noticed that timer mods are almost obsolete as there are timers that show up over the debuff on your target.

Great thread, inspiring stuff and real food for thought. I am very tempted to try a BM build out but I still dont have a handle on gear stat priority. If someone could have a look at my profile and give me pointer or two where slots can be improved that would be great.

I am currently 0/31/30 with 750 odd agi, 1977 RAP and 29.xx% crit. last Gruul kill the WWS report had me at 748 DPS without a flask but with Agi/Fel Str and a major mageblood. Compared to other DPS classes in my guild I hold my own and earn my slot, but if there is a better DPS option out there I am willing to give it a try.

What can i say Howitzer has inspired me.

Taz

Right on dude! I've always been a firm believer in challenging yourself in every aspect of an MMO since UO in 1997. No different here, really. I'm really liking this "newbwithin" spec so far and I'll come back with more WWS results next week. Either way, its a very new spin on raiding as a hunter and quite a welcome change. One can only hope it gets that much better come patch day.

Does anyone know which is better for melee, 125 AP or 3% damage. Say you had 2 *gasp* BM hunters in a raid. You could put one with the casters and one with the melee. Would the melee group benefit more from TSA or FI?

Top notch gear in 2.1 patch = EW > FI > TSA

Well, FI maybe highest if your dpsers are doing close to 1000 dps but EW is still the highest total dps.

I think that's highly dependent on raid composition. If you're only running 1 heavy melee group EW and TSA are both have reduced usefulness. The biggest advantage EW has over FI is that it's a raid-wide buff, so it helps everyone without respect to group position. However, it's a bit of an oversimplification to simply say EW is always better than FI is always better than TSA.

I also want to put up my results from a swap to BM. I don't have a direct comparison from my time as MM for the same fight, but I'll provide them for comparison (if anyone cares). Unfortunately my guild is still clearing Karazhan and Gruul for gear, although hopefully we'll attempt and down Magtheridon soon. Consequently I don't have any reports from "real" 25 man content, but I'll through my anecdotal evidence into the BM pile.

Karazhan (BM spec - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=mtbM0xgRquVoVVbRV)
(it's a full run, click through the reports to see different encounters - notice the drop in damage on Aran when my pet dies)
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=khcqxwltovjz3&a=60

Karazhan (MM spec - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=VZVVbRqzhest0Ghbxc)
(this is the second day of a two day run)
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=xcfyks1osn5io&a=70

Dont forget tanks and pets for EW.

Been reading up on going BM, since i'm tired of chugging 20g worth of pots on raid bosses to keep up my 650dps MM spec. Couple things from this thread are bugging me tho.

1. According to the rogues in my guild, their white damage is 50% of their total damage. TSA = 125AP = 8.9dps. Double that to account for specials, and you get ~18dps for rogues from TSA. So at 600dps and less, 125AP > 3% damage increase, assuming FI is always up. Most rogues can get above that easily, so in general FI > TSA.

2. Unless you are using a very fast weapon, and therefore have a smaller average weapon damage, there is no reason to not use multi-shot to maxamize dps when BM spec. SS is a lot more mana efficient, but you can compensate for that by using mana pots, Fel mana pots, or bugging your raid leader until you get a shadow priest in your group.

I know it's rediculously long now, but anyone who is serious about hunter dps should read the Hunter Mechanics -- v2.0 thread, found here Hunter Mechanics -- v2.0/TBC.

Cheers
Rudolph~

Because of the global cooldown multi-shot is really not the effort especially without efficiency. Rather go to group with shaman, warrior and druid than shadowpriest and do that 10-15 dps more by weaving multi as BM.

My multi-shot does 298.9 more damage then a steady shot. That's ~200dps more by using that one multi shot over a steady shot. Seems worth the mana, even if you don't have a shadow priest in your group feeding you mana. At worst you can use multi at the begining of the fight and if you end up getting low, like under 20% mana, you can remove it from your rotation and conserve mana.

Also, being in a group with a feral druid is highly unlikely for any boss. Most guilds run 1 feral druid in raids for tanking purposes, and if he is tanking, he's not going to be in the dps group with a warrior rogue hunter and shaman. There is no reason why you can't be in a SP group with a shaman as well, since you increase the damage of all your party members which in the case of the SP results in more mana for the group as a whole. The only other class that buffs SP dps by being in the same group is a caster with Atiesh.

5% crit from LotP is ~40dps (assuming you have mortal shots). A SP doing 900dps, which is not unreasonable for a good player with good gear, will return to each party member 225mp5. That's equivilent to 157dps if you use all of that mana during the fight, which is a little tough to do. Add to that mana returned the heals via Vampiric Embrace, which for a 900dps SP would be 1125hp5. A BM pet should have around 7-9k HP, so a SP could heal your pet from the brink of death to full life in ~30-45sec. SP is the way to go.

Cheers
Rudolph~

Once you show me WWS of auto/steady for over 5 mins and then auto/steady/multi then I might actually believe that.

I totally agree with Gold here. The SP is pure MONEY for a BM hunter. I don't have to worry about healing my pet, I don't have to worry about my mana, either. Its straight up more DPS over a long fight because I can go all out non stop.

So, after all this talk I want to try BM for raiding (I leveled BM and did a ton of 5 mans that way.) Will I be disappointed if I try it before 2.1? Are the changes in 2.1 going to make that much of a difference in the dps (other than keeping my pet alive.)


BTW Goldengiff: My guild loves feral tanks so on fights they are not needed they go kitty and are in melee groups. If I get lucky I am grouped with them or a s-priest (if not then I am with 3 holy priest and a pally.) But, it is not uncommon (at least for my guild, which I like to think of normal(ish)) to be with a feral druid.

Yet another aside, how ofter do you other hunters get to be with a s-priest? 50%? 75% of the time? How often are you with at least one other player that helps your dps (shaman with mana totem and GoA, feral druid or s-priest)? I just want to know how much I should be bugging my raid leader. =p

Just shot about 100 times with steady and auto on rats and the difference was 175. Using Wrathtide and the 37 dps arrows. Still not worth the lost time on steady shot cast time or mana cost.

@Bigblue: You're lucky man. Our guild only has one feral druid worth mentioning and he's out MT so he's always in the "MT group". So, no dps from him. If we had another good feral druid then we might give him to melee, but we only ever run 3 rogues max, only have 2 hunters, and only 2 serious dps warriors (arena MS spec doesn't count). An ideal group for a BM hunter would be hunter, feral druid, MM hunter, SP, and shaman, but that would never happen :P

@osse: it deffinatly depends on the weapon you use. Sunfury bow is 2.9, wrathtide is 3.0, both are better for using multi-shot. What you aren't factoring in is the fact that altho haste will make the cast time of Steady less then 1.5sec, nothing except Heroism will lower your GCD. So you are still only shooting 1 Steady every 1.5sec. Haste doesn't increase your Steady DPS, unless it's counteracting latency issues, which everyone has to some extent. The ONLY reason you would use steady over multi is if you have a fast enough bow that it actually does less damage then steady or if you are having mana issues.

5% pet damage seems like quite a lot. Let's say, 1-2% higher personal damage when BM speced, more after kill command change?

Silly as it may be, I'm less inclined to spec BM as a non-orc. I tried BM a while back and hated it for 5v5.

I'd like to see racial talent (and priest spell) respecs Of course, the most ridiculous in raiding is Tauren MT.

Just do WWS with both cycles Goldengiff and impress me. :/

OSSE!
I love your posts they always make me want to work hard on my hunter seeing how good a well geared and played one performs.

Anyways on to some other things. First of all im only a 67 hunter and play very little, and have little time to test, so this is just theorycraft which is probably wrong.

I believe you are using bows that are too fast. I believe the whole point of BM is the increased speed so you get more steady shots off. The following list is made assuming about 1950 rap and 25% crit the average damage from auto and steady are gotten from cheaky's spreadsheet.

Weapon- Auto Damage- Steady Damage- Time for rotation- DPS
wrathtide longbow- 1006.44- 1001.73- 2.1739- 923.7637426
sunfury bow of the pheonix- 995.6- 1023.69- 2.1014- 960.926049
wlofslayer sniper rifle- 914.3- 1010.67- 1.9565- 983.8844876
don santos rifle- 919.61- 1015.96- 1.9565- 989.3023256
scorchwood bow- 685.63- 934.91- 1.5942- 1016.522394
mamas insurance- 695.47- 947.74- 1.59942- 1027.378675
wrathfire hand cannon- 653.8- 978.04- 1.586956- 1028.283078

Im assuming the rotation is one steady plus one auto so thats the auto shot time or the time to cast a steady plus .5 seconds for auto which ever one is longer. Now i know some of these bows take perfect timing and like no latency but just posting what im working on now.
Now unless im completely wrong somewhere its funny how the green bows do better then the epics. Also the wrathfire hand cannon has a crazy dps considering the fact that you are actually cliping autoshots on it.

anyways just posting this for some reactions or to find out were i did something wrong.


Bah wish i knew how to post a table to make this clearer.

Next patch will you consider putting 2 points into Improved Mend Pet over Bestial Discipline? It just seems it would be nicer with making you as a hunter A) More Self Reliant and B) Less mana intensive. Even considering you have a shadow priest 100% of the time?

It just seems that Bestial Discipline + GFTT is a bit much even when spamming screech every time.

Be careful when using weapons that do not allow for any lag to be absorbed by the inherent delays int he rotation. My spreadsheet (Cheeky, not cheaky) is intended to be used to compare talents/gear/strategies. Unless you have some very specific information for a lot of values (mob armor, reaction time, lag, etc.) you don't see real-world numbers exactly like what the equations turn out. DPS from super-fast bows is one of its biggest holes.

The next version (out after 2.1, since it has been modified for the changes in the next patch) will have the ability to specify a lag/reaction time that gets added to the start of every user-initiated cast. Just putting a .1-.25 second delay in with those super fast bows cripples the DPS numbers you are seeing now. Whereas the slower, epic-quality bows handle the delays with little loss to DPS.

I do agree that BM's strength is to allow a Hunter to use the slower, more powerful bows available in the raids and maintain a simple auto/special rotation. Of course, I am still holding out hope that Blizzard will finally come to a clean solution for the problem of weapon speed being of much greater importance to Hunters than base weapon DPS.

Also, try using the tags [ code ] and [ /code ] (no spaces, of course) to have the section of text formatted in a fixed size font, allowing you to have clean columns.

Thanks for the reply
I just used your spreadsheet to find the average damage for each shot not for the dps value.

And yes i know some of those numbers require perfect conditions.

To see the effect of lag on the rotation, lets use the wrathfire hand cannon
the average auto damage from you spreadsheet was 653.8
the average steady damage was 978.04
for a total of 1631.84
so the dps would be that divede by the time to cast a steady plus auto, so
1.5/((1.2)*(1.15))+.5 +lag
Lag DPS
0 1028.283078
.05 996.8746869
.1 967.3281342
.15 939.4826351
.2 913.1954004
.25 888.3391872

which makes it better then the wrathfire longbow for up to .15 seconds of lag (im not sure the average latency and reaction time of hunter so im not sure if this is good.)
I believe Osse said he has like 50 ms latency which would still leave him .1 seconds to get his shot off which im assuming is enough.

When i get up in the morning ill run some numbers on some more weapons, the barrelblade longrifle looks really nice. Ill look at the skyfire hawk bow, splintermark, felsteel broomstick, and consortium blaster. Those were the only ones that seemed like they would be worth looking at ill check their dps with different lag levels too and post my findings.

It seems slower weapons will always be more forgiving of lag. It's scary that a 1/4 second lag + reaction time with that weapon costs you roughly 20% of your DPS. That's huge.

Even with 50 ms latency I imagine Osse still has a .1 - .2 second delay from reaction time and latency. (Not sure how much gaming keyboards with spamming macros make up for this.)

I am (as a MM Hunter) frustrated with not being able to get a high-DPS 2.4-2.5s bow. My latency and reaction times make 2x special between autos a very dicey situation. Part of my personal reasoning for switching to BM is to keep things simple for myself.

Ishichin, I apologize if I came off harsh at all, reading my post now I'm not sure I struck the tone I intended to. I do hope the spreadsheet is useful to you, and feel free to offer any suggestions you have.

I tried dps on blasted lands with pure steady-auto rotation on 18/43 build, recap captured for 5 minutes shooting, I used mp5 flask to keep it up and super mana pots, 782 dps on me, 190 dps on pet, so almost 1000 dps without any buffs, although pets do quite high damage in blasted lands due to no misses. But in any case this was only auto-steady rotation reaching almost 1000 dps on 16.58% mitigation which is a bit lower than the standard mitigation on bosses without COR.

I had 80-100 ms in PTR.

Then I tried with 41/20 build. With steady auto rotation I did 889 dps and pet did 250 dps, recap captured for 4:27. 1139 compared to 972 on MM build.

Edit: Ran another test for 4 minutes, this time recap captured 782 dps on me. I don't know if recap is bugged in PTR but 100 dps difference between 2 tries seems quite weird.

Edit: A third test for 5 minutes showed 266 dps for pet and 864 for me.

Edit: Tried in MM build a rotation which shoots arcane right after steady and before auto whenever it's ready to go, suprisingly that rotation did less dps than auto-steady only rotation.


After 5 hours of trying different rotations, the best one turned out to be BM build with steady + auto + KC. Hunter dps going up to 870 over 5 minutes with just using mp5 flask. The amazing thing was pet dps going up to 320 with spamming KC. I remind that this is an unbuffed pet. Pets with battleshout+kings+might usually do 100 dps higher than unbuffed pets. Although this is a lvl 52 mob, so dodges/parries are minimum but in any case, this rotation turned out to be the most easily managable one with using castsequence for steady/auto and timing KC right after steady cast finishes and the most damaging one. 1186 dps against a mob with 20% mitigation over 5 minutes without buffs.

(Not to mention pet's growl ability was selected for not grabbing aggro every 20 seconds, meaning lots of energy was being spent on growl which will go to Lightning Breath in a raid)

Your not coming off harsh at all, like i said i have very little in game experience so i expect to revise my thoughts on input from others.

playing with excel i came up with the following conclusion in the middle of the night so ill have to check my self later.
The best BM weapons are as follows.
0-latency - mama's insurance
.05-latency - consortium blaster
.1-latency - consortium blaster
.15-latency - consortium blaster
.2-latency - barrel-blade longrifle (with two +16ap gems)
.25-latency - barrel-blade longrifle (with two +16ap gems)
.3-latency - barrel-blade longrifle (with two +16ap gems)
.35-latency - don santo's famous hunting rifle
.4-latency - don santo's famous hunting rifle
.45-latency - sunfury bow of the pheonix
.5-latency - sunfury bow of the pheonix

i just realized none of this is accounting improved aspect of the hawk
and i also think i missed some epic weapons from raids that ill look up later

Hmm.. 1.77 attack speed with Consortium Blaster, suppose I can give it a go although it'll use buttloads of mana. :p

Oh and not sure if I said it yet but the tests I did were on live servers, dps will go up quite a bit with the new stuff. ^^

Ok, Consortium Blaster with no scope using the same buffs as before. no dps consumables, only mana. mana oils, vendor bullets etc.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=cggmtwseklybe&a=0

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=w4lfkiz3exzvk&a=0

Both with same gun, ~75ms, had two clients open and somehow managed to bug judgement of wisdom on the mob as you can see lol.

That would be close to average raid ms though so I'll stick to the Wrathtide it seems. And put 28 crit rating on it so steady shot actually benefits from the scope so dps will be even higher. :|

Shame really, I like the Consortium gun graphics.

ps. my arms hurt after making sure that I wont clip anything when rapid fire or quick shots were up.

Ya that list was assuming no improved aspect of the hawk or rapid fire. I believe you would be cliping a lot of auto shots with improved aspect of the hawk being up like half the time. Maybe you have been using the right speed all along :P. You use to have a don santons famous hunting rifle. If you could i would love to see that test since it should account for procs and rapid fire plus average out to be like 100ap gain.

Does it not have hidden cooldown?

i thought i read about people getting reprocs so i thought there was no cooldown.

First of all, omg, you were raiding for 7 hours?
Secondly, just a short question. You were obviously using your Pet on Maiden. Was that because you had so little melees and it was ok or did I miss a change and the pet is not chaining anymore?

1) Yes, we normally do Karazhan in two days because we swap people in and out alot (which takes time) but this week we transferred, which reset our raid IDs. So we did karazhan twice and gruul twice, and we had to cram karazhan into a single night (which, again, we normally don't do).
2) I'm not sure. I'm looking at the maiden fight now (http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...=5&s=4685,4817) and from the looks of it, my pet WAS taking more holy damage than just the consecration. Presumably it was also chaining Holy Wrath. However, when I look at Maiden's damage out(http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...4685,4817&a=28) I see she only had 6 holy wrath hits. Considering we had 2 warriors and a Druid in melee range in addition to my pet, I'd say we probably got lucky with the chaining. I seem to remember Alcaras standing on top of my pet , so there was a triangle between the him/pet, other warrior, and druid. I would guess that any chaining of holy wrath occured only between Alcaras and my pet, if my recollection of events is correct.

Short version: I think pets chain on Maiden. I don't specifically recall if my pet was hit by holy wrath, but from the looks of things I think it was.

Typically after taking Intimidation/Discipline I have 2 pts left to get to the next tier, which I dump into Endurance. If I wanted Imp. Mend I would probably dump those 2 points in there instead.

Sorry I was gone for a while, missed the requests for the full video. I actually trashed the source after I cropped out the piece with me in it. I'll record and post a few more during this week.

Far as specials go, I was using max rank everything cool downs permitting. Steady shots most of the time, slotting multis and arcanes as possible. Burned all my mana in 80 seconds, did about 66800 damage in that time period so a bit over 800 dps from my ranged attacks.

I should be running a bunch of heroics this week and I'll see what kinda vids I can get.

Edit: Oh and I got a bunch of PMs about my cast bars. Like others have mentioned I use LittleTrouble for my autoshot timer. I use eCastingBar for my cast bar and played with the sizes/transparencies till I could drag the main eCastingBar over LittleTrouble and the result is what you saw.

I was wondering if we could have some discussion as to what the optimal pet is. I see some people using owls in WWS, I assume for the utility of the buff. Would a windserpent or ravager be better and if so which one? One reason I ask is that I am excited by what I read here about BM but want to make sure I have the best pet available. If that requires me to level a Ravager I want to take that into consideration before I respec.

I've been using Cheeky's spreadsheet to calculate available focus per second for abilities. With my cat I'm seeing a slight excess of focus on average (spamming both Bite and Claw; with bestial discipline and GFTT @ 20% to crit). Modeling a Windserpent, I'm not getting enough focus to maintain LB spam. Theoretically, according to the spreadsheet, I gain approximately 11 dps by going with my cat (not to mention that I don't have to deal with the stupid caster pathing). With a ravager I'm using focus at about the same rate as with my cat, but gore is less effective at turning focus into damage than claw.

As far as I'm concerned, the modeling puts cats ahead of wind serpents and ravagers. Now, if you have an enhancement shaman from whom you windserpent can steal SS charges, it probably would put out more damage. Then again, that doesn't seem like a very good plan.

For reference, the special attack numbers the spreadsheet returned @20% to crit were
Cat (spamming claw 9 bite 9) ===106.12 DPS
Ravager (spamming gore 9 bite 9) ===85.66 DPS
Windserpent (spamming LB 6) ===94.25 DPS

Granted this is theoretical, but given the theoretical disparity between a windserpent and cat, the annoying caster pathing of the windserpent, and the ready availability of level 70 cats (in skettis) for taming, I'd say go with a cat if you have the choice.

All this talk of latency, shot rotations, ect, I have enough arena points to pick up the Gladiator's Xbow Tuesday, just wondering if any BM hunters have this and if working out a rotation similar to a Marks Auto->Special->Special->Auto->Special->Repeat with the slower 3.2 Xbow would work out?

Do any BM hunters use this, or are aspiring to get it? I'm using Sunfury right now, and seems with two haste effects active, like many others have stated in this post, it's not worth Steady Shotting, just Auto->Arcane/Multi/KC..

Maybe the theorycrafters could help you more with this, but with 200ms ping or so I don't remember being able to get two specials in between autos without delaying an auto.

Marks Auto->Special->Special->Auto rotation cannot be done with any spec or any bow currently in game afaik.
GCD is 1.5s for all shots.

Does this take into account the fact that Claw and Bite are not spammable?
Surely if you've taken Go for the throat, having a pet with the ability to dump focus fast is your primary concern.

Only Bite is not spammable. I did think Gore was slightly better though, because of the 50% damage increase chance.

Actually I'm a bit confused now. The name of the chained spell for the melee range is Holy Wrath, right?

Cause with the neat new feature of WWS, which lets you check out the full combat log
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...4685,4817&bl=0

I only saw the wrath hit your warrior one time. All the other times it hit ranged classes, like your mages and priests, and I cant see any chaining whatsoever. So maybe this is either not really displayed correctly or it was completely changed.

On the Curator for example everything is plain to see. The spawning Flares hit 2 warriors and your pet each time they spawn.

Edit: Whats even funnier, I just checked a 3 week old log from us and it was the same. 90% of holy wrath goes to ranged casters. Strange, or I'm missing something...
The only damage done to the other melees is repentance and holy ground, and I guess thats her aura.

Edit2: Reading up on a guide it seems holy wrath has been random all the time and not only meant for melee. It just causes bigger problems if it hits a melee, but neither in yours not in my log did I see a moment where 2 people where hit.

Edit3: ok, now its all clear. It is random target damage and it chains just perfectly. I just had a look at our log from last week and we had 4 melees in. The wrath hit the first one for 2068, the second for 2771, the third for 3407 and the fourth for 5595.

If my pet would have been in there, someone would have died in that moment, so sadly I'll have to keep it out. The only thing that has me wondering is, why no one received chain hits when your warrior got hit by wrath.

Indeed - I don't understand this either:

Gore works out(modelling in the double damage 50% chance) at 25 focus for 73.5 damage
Claw works out as 25 focus for 65 damage

Therefore Ravager > Cat seeing as both have a +10% modifier

Am i missing something?

I have to add one thing to this rotation discussion and the lags. On my server I mostly use a castsequence macro for steady/auto with the Steelhawk Xbox. As a BM my autospeed is 2.01 so there is a LOT of space for the steady which should be hasted to around 1.1 cast speed and I very rarely clobber my autoshot.

Now I was playing on the test server and sadly cant say what the latency was, because I have a complete custom ui.
But the point is, even when I was mashing the button like crazy there was almost not ONE single autoshot that was not clobbered by at least +0.1 and often +0.3.

So I imagine latency was not great on the PTR, but since many people play with a bad latency that really shows its a big dps hit in the end and I imagine MM hunter who try to fit in 2 specials between an autoshot have just about 0 chance to do so without perfect latency.

Gore (Rank 9)
25 Focus 5 yd range
Instant
Gores the enemy, causing 37 to 61 damage. This attack has a 50% chance to inflict double damage.

37+61 / 2 = 49
49x1.5 = 73.5

73.5 / 25 = 2.94


Claw (Rank 9)
25 Focus 5 yd range
Claw the enemy, causing 54 to 76 damage.

54+76 / 2 = 65
65/25 = 2.6

So yeah, I dont understand how claw is better either. :|

Heh, funny that I'm leveling an owl to 70 before 2.1 hits and they add lvl 70 ravagers. 63 -> 70 is too much for me for 0.32 dmg per focus for a few weeks.

Well i'm usually sitting at about 300-400ms on the PTR.
The impact of that is doubly bad given that the client will not allow another shot to fire until it has confirmation that the previous one has cast.
The effect of that being that if you are trying to follow steady with a special, you then have to wait double the lag time to actually fire that special(minus haste taken off steady shot)
Beastmastery alleviates the issue somewhat as you are only waiting on a client delay in order to fire the autoshot rather than a server check.

I hadn't worked it out by hand, I had only been using the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is returning different numbers than your calculations; my guess is that Cheeky's sheet is not correctly calculating the possibility of 50% extra damage on Gore - I'll check this when I get home. Based on the numbers you posted it would appear Gore is superior, however.

As far as the use of the term "spamming" I only meant it with respect to having autocast on for my pet. I don't know how the pet cast priority system works, but my guess is that it casts whatever ability costs the most focus (given that the pet has enough focus to cast this).

As far as the model goes, from all appearances Cheeky's sheet works out focus per second based on ability usage and compares this with focus per second provided from talents / GFTT (based on crit rate) to determine how often an ability will be cast. Given that the focus per second usage on claw and bite (or Gore and Bite, for a ravager) is somewhat lower a cat is able to cast them more often than a windserpent can cast lightning breath, yielding a higher damage return. Presumably. I haven't dug into the spreadsheet's guts very much, nor am I inclined to do so; you can ask him how he models it if you need more information (I could be totally wrong about how it works, so keep that in mind). Empirical testing at this point probably would be both more accurate and useful.

Hmm,

I don't really understand how you come up with differences in focus/s
That should be exactly the same for both cat and Ravager, so in theory, gore being slightly higher damage is the only difference whatsoever in those two pets.

I haven't checked out what Lightning Breath hits for post-nerf but I imagine the only point in taking it is as an incredibly fast focus dump for when you hit a critstreak.
Just depends whether that factor outweighs the 7% vs 10% disadvantage that a windserpent has.

Here's my LB stats from yesterday:
You're clearly looking at more damage per focus, but as to whether that outdoes 3% melee damage, I can't say.

More BM Raiding Input:

Last night we were in Tempest Keep trying out Astromancer for the first time and I have a few things to say about Beast Mastery in regards to TK up to this point... First, the pets are quite prone to death, (really fast death), if you're not paying attention. Certain mobs WW quite a bit and AOE damage on some of the casters in there is also a sure death if you're not fast to react. I assume this kind of shit will cease to happen or be way more friendly with the changes in 2.1. We'll see...

Having said that... If you can manage your pet's HP you can put out disgusting sustained DPS on the trash mobs and even on the boss fights. I was pushing 1300+ dps on the boss very consistently and peaking out at 1500+ on bursts. Needless to say, I could not pull off this kind of "SUSTAINED" DPS with the other 2 talent trees. Now I realize that full MM has some really sweet burst in PVP, etc. However, I'm speaking from a PVE point of view only at this point.

The screenshot here shows some numbers, (I won't post WWS results for Astromancer at this point), to give you an idea of what's possible when full potted, etc etc.

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/117/1300eb7.jpg
click picture twice to maximize the size. Pic is 1680x1050.

Offtopic, but for some time now I try to get this addon which shows you the name of the shot next to the damage. People said its sct, but I cant get it done.
Is it sct? And if yes, what option do I have to use?

I don't think this is the issue at hand, however. LB does do more damage per focus, but the time between casts (unless you get a crit streak or generally have a high crit rate) is somewhat longer than the time between claws. Keep in mind that although we tend to model abilities as continuous (for example, damage per mana) they are actually discrete (correct me if I'm wrong). Because abilties are discrete they won't act as perfectly as you model them - which is why the lower cost (i.e. higher granularity) of claw/gore MIGHT mean higher damage output than LB, but I couldn't say with any certainty without more testing.
I think you misinterpreted my last post, I didn't mean to imply there is a difference between gore and claw in terms of focus per second, but rather that claw and gore are the same but BOTH are different from lightning breath.

There is a bug in the current version on Gore. I completely left out the 150% damage adjustment to account for the double damage 50% of the time thing. I also added in a 5% dodge chance for melee attacks. I have no idea what to put for mob parry or block, so those are still unaccounted for.

I also had some mis-alignment in the Damage per Focus calculations, they were not factoring in the damage after adjustments from crit, Unleashed Fury, etc.

Your summary of the way I model pet special attacks is pretty much spot-on. The entire pet DPS section is still a work in progress as I get more in-game confimation of the numbers. If anyone has any ideas on what I can do to improve accuracy I am all ears.

Here is the DPF (Damage per Focus) using the correct math for Gore, and a non-BM Hunter:
As you can see, Gore is only second to Bite in terms of effiency, and Ravagers will most likely be slightly out-damaging cats. Once you can get a level 70 Ravager I'll probably grab one.

I currently do not have any +spell damage added into Lightning Breath from Hunter RAP. Does anyone know for sure what the ratio is now? Also how do we compute the chance for Lightning Breath to critically hit, is it pet Int based? (I can't wait to tell the mages to AI my pet each time I rez him. )

What is your spec?
The numbers take on a whole new meaning if we factor in unleashed fury and pet happiness.

Thanks for the update on the state of the spreadsheet - it was probably irresponsible of me to present that information for modeling if the sheet wasn't complete yet (my fault there). I don't currently have a windserpent, but I might be able to run some tests when I get home (tame one and play around with it). If nothing else I should be able to tell if AI has ANY effect on LB crit chance. For my own reference, is there a stat that effects pet melee chance that the community is aware of?

Its called MIK's combat log. It used to be an ACE2 mod but for some reason it was removed. You can find it on curse gaming.

Do I understand correctly that they are adding level 70 ravagers in 2.1? If so where will they be?

Thanks a lot. A WWS log would really help to understand why you did so much damage, though

I have heard this mentioned before but the only ravager I know that is being added to the "tameable" list is level 61.

I've been going back and forth, trying to decide between BM and MM for my raiding spec. I want to be able to provide the maximum DPS possible to my group, but because I enjoy the playstyle a bit more, I'd prefer to go MM if it's not significantly inferior to BM. I've been doing some theorycrafting comparisons and figured that I'd pass them along.

For my calculations, I assumed 500 Agi, 250 Int, 1000 AP from gear, 130 crit, 120 hit, 32 DPS ammo, and a 77.4 DPS, 2.9 speed weapon (I approximated these based on Howitzer's gear, figuring it'd be a good representation of typical raiding gear). I did not include consumables (my guild tends not to use them as we're semi-casual), but did include Kings, Might, Mark of the Wild, and Arcane Brilliance. Pet DPS values are based on Cheeky's spreadsheet calculations and I used a steady-shot rotation for BM and a steady-shot/multi-shot replacement rotation for MM.

41/20 BM: 2183 RAP, 1077 hunter DPS, 380 pet DPS, 1457 total DPS
7/49+ MM: 2727 RAP, 1106 hunter DPS, 215 pet DPS, 1321 total DPS

Clearly, BM is a better choice with this particular gear set, and by a fairly significant margin (over 10%). However, if I were to use the same numbers, but with a 2.4 speed bow (the current "ideal" speed for MM builds), the 7/49 build would provide a total DPS of 1441 - very similar to the BM values. What this says to me is that BM is not inherently better for raiding than MM (which is what my gut was telling me), but because of the current ranged weapon itemization (the best 2.4 speed weapon is only 66.3 DPS while most of the epic weapons are around BM's 2.8/2.9 ideal), BM is currently able to produce better results (especially with MM's conflict of wanting faster weapons for the ideal steady-shot rotation, but losing multi-shot DPS in the process).

Still not sure what I'm going to make of this as I get my hunter closer to raidworthiness, but I think it's clear that if my goal is max DPS and there are no changes to ranged weapon itemization (at least in the ranges attainable by my guild currently), BM will be the choice I'll need to make.

Adding in glancing blows for base damage would help with the accruacy, although it's not a huge effect (skipping it inflates overall pet DPS by about 5%). I approximated with 25% based on reported rates.

I whole-heartedly agree with this. By making every ranged epic weapon in the 2.7-2.9s speed you depress the DPS of MM Hunters who cannot hit 2 specials between autos due to latency. Because of Serpent's Swiftness there are always going to be a portion of Hunters who want slow bows and a portion who want fast bows. With the infinite amounf of daggers available as raid loot, it shouldn't be too hard to add in a slightly faster bow/gun here or there...

The in-progress version has glancing blows modeled at the 2.0 rates on all normal melee (i.e. white damage) attacks. Against a level 73 boss it works out as a 26% DPS decrease to that damage only. I have also added in Cobra Reflexes in anticipation of the next patch.

The only remaining information I need to feel good about where pet DPS is at is:
1) Lightning Breath +damage from RAP ratio
2) New glancing blow rates and damage reduction

Someone earlier was asking why some hunters have an aversion towards BM spec. The problem for me isn't that it's "more micromanagement" although that is true. It's that the BM spec simply isn't fun. It is entirely autoshot dependant spec. With auto accounting for 40-50% of your personal damage output. This is a video game with make believe goals and rewards, so like many others the only true reward is pride. Winning at the damage meters, having your ingame name be synonymous with being known as a good player, etc.. Having my character simply autoshot himself onto the damage meters is embarrassing for me. It's also frustrating to depend on a pet friendly encounter for you to truly achieve your full DPS potential.

I also found it's survivability in non-raid situations very annoying. If you go a full 41 you can't get scattershot. Intimidation is on a 1min CD and requires your pet to be on the right target and in range to attack. Pets are such a nuisance in terms of that (having trouble attacking a moving target) that I often found myself dead. Going MM gives you so much more in terms of scattershot, imp wing clip (if you go 0/41/20), silent shot. I also find the 31 and 41 pt talents terrible, especially the 41. I don't know what Blizzard was thinking on that one. At least in MM the 31 is a persistent bonus, and silent shot is very useful in non-raiding situations.

Fundamentally I oppose BM. It's dependence on an auto attack, it's dependence on an often times unusable pet. It's as if you aren't really playing the game anymore, it's playing for you. I can't take pride in what I'm doing under those circumstances. I told my guild mates that I would quit Warcraft before I spec BM again. So I quit Warcraft back in early February. There are plenty of games out there, I don't need to be watching my character autoshoot for a 4hr raid. Others may find glory in autoshooting and telling your pet when to do a KC/BW, I don't. I've played a raiding warrior and priest before, so such a lack of involvement is too frustrating to stand for me. I regret selling my priest and warrior just before TBC came out.

My spec should link from my profile. It's a typical 41/20/0. Pet happiness is pretty much always green; at least it was for those stats I pasted.

I think you are greatly mistaken about BM. MM has a very similar % of damage coming from Auto-shot. I am BM for the first time in over 2 years, and if there is one thing that is immediatly obvious right off the bat it's that BM spec is MUCH more involved when you're raiding.

Now, your comments about it outside of raids are fine, but I think you are not understanding where your damage comes from as an MM Hunter.

This is basically the conclusion I came to myself. This isn't saying you must be BM or you're gimping yourself. I think its quite gear dependent, player dependent, and has its ups and downs. But so far, I've been sweeping up the floor with sustained dps and its been quite a bit of fun.

what kinda gear would you suggest going for? and is there a certain focus of gems that BM should go for?

Don't ever play a warlock or SP or rogue or... wait... all classes depend on white damage, right? Locks and SP's throw up their DOTs and forget about them. The BM hunter's pet IS your DOT that you have to manage. Think of yourself as an affliction lock that has to maintain your DOT through pet mend and correct positioning / smart use. BM in raiding I've found isn't auto-pilot by any means. If you're not rotating shots correctly and managing your pet you'll be no better than that newb lolbm hunter standing in Org staring at you and asking stupid questions like "is that T7?" Take pride in whatever spec you have by showing the rest of the raid and yourself that you can squeeze every ounce of utility / dps out of your class.

I will have to agree with the above comment. I don't think I have been able to see any WWS parses where our Hunters haven't had ~40% of their damage coming from auto shot.

Howitzer -
One of my real concerns with the BM build is the ability to function with out a Shadow Priest in particular or a good group structure in it's absence. Can you give an example of a typical raid structure for say a magtheridon kill? We currently only have one shadow priest and I cant see me getting in a group with him any time soon.

The other reason I have not yet respecced is I am still testing a hybrid build. I am currently 0/31/30 and self buffing to 1950RAP with 30.5% crit with a capped hit, come patch I will go up to 2k+ with that crit. Since the respec from MM I have consistently doing better damage than the other hunters in my guild, and close to running with some of the more traditional powerhouse dps classes without the benefit of a stacked group. I want to push the issue see if i can get some better group make ups than I am currently getting without hurting raid DPS before I pass final judgment.

Looking forward to hearing about the make up of your groups as I think it will be a great help. In fact if anyone else would like to post thier actual and fantasy groups setups that would be great.

Taz

If I've got a few mana pots, I'd rather be in the rogues' dps group with the feral druid and the enhancement shaman. Beastial Wrath + trinkets and Heroism is incredible.

after the patch hopefully the hunter group will be MM hunter / surviv hunter / BM hunter / shaman / feral druid. and yes we always bring 3 hunters to raids.

I think I can help here.

First, I went from 41+ to 0/31/30 and spent some time with it, but then I discovered 0/38/23. You might give it a shot...LR really does not provide a large benefit given Hunter itemization these days. You will drop a bit of crit, but you should pick up more than enough AP to make up for it. I'd try that build before going to BM, since imo it represents a much better "hybrid" build and the ultimate non-BM raid build. Just my opinion, but crunch the numbers and see for your toon if you would be better off.

As for raid composition, a Shadow Priest is of course a great luxury, but BM is not inherently more mana-intensive than other builds. Yes, you are spamming Steady more often, but you are not spamming Arcane and Multi nearly as often. In fact, in my case, I'm seeing Arcane damage as being *barely* better than my Steady Shots, so I'm looking at dropping it altogether from my rotation. The only time it would be used if if I get a Quick Shots proc during Rapid Fire, since the GCD will start pushing Steady into the next Auto when that happens.

I've been in a bunch of different group make-ups in the past week of raiding, and I'm really liking the melee group. Shaman buffs are *incredible* for your pet, since they get all the goodies that Rogues get (10% AP, Str totem, Agi totem, Heroism), plus you get the Agi and Heroism. Furthermore, BS from the Warrior is a huge buff for the pet as well. Maybe even an MM Hunter in there for TSA. In the caster group, you get infinite mana...and that's basically it. I've found with smart consumable use, I'm keeping my mana up just fine. So for me as a raid leader (who gets to choose my group =P), I'm trying to get into the Shadow Priest group for trash/easy-farm bosses, then into the melee DPS group for a tough/new boss.

And since nothing is easy, the one exception is when there is significant environmental damage to the pet. In those cases, VT/VE spam not only keeps you plugging away, but it keeps your pet alive as well. So for Prince I always make sure I'm in the SPriest group, since my pet is always taking the shadow nova damage (no point pulling him out if he's going to get healed back to full before the next one).

There is no one "perfect" group for a BM Hunter, because each fight is different, but hopefully that gives you an idea of some of the situations I've played around with in the past week.

Maintain a healthy crit rate for KC (this will be huge in 2.1) and get that RAP up. I'm happy with my ~21.5% crit, but I'm still working on getting my RAP up a bit more (at ~1800+ with Hawk atm). I will even sacrifice a bit of my crit to get decent RAP upgrades. Probably move change my 8 crit gems for 8 Agi, so as to maintain some crit but also get the AP. In general, straight crit gems are a no-no for BM.

38/23 is a great build, I used it for a long time for raiding specifically and like it a lot. However, (I personally), have found that while 38/23 can provide more "burst" damage, it does not give the same "sustained" high dps of the 41/20/0 build when all variables are working to your advantage. I'm not going to write-off BM for raiding just yet. I'm going to stay this spec until at least a week into patch 2.1 to make a final decision.

Exactly... You can't make a final decision on a 2.1 raiding build until you've had the chance to raid a few times with it after 2.1. In fact, I basically decided to run 41/20 now specifically in preparation for 2.1... just to figure out how the hell to play BM. I'm liking it a lot so far though and it looks like it will only be getting better with the next patch.

Of course, in 2.2 they'll probably replace pets with critters or something like that.

It's been a while since I ran the numbers but back when I raided multishot accounted for a huge amount of my damage on full instances. On a single target boss you are correct, but on trash clears and bosses with more than one target (Moroes/Curator) my auto damage was somewhere around 33-35%, versus 40-50% when BM. To me that's a big deal, it means I'm using 2 buttons instead of 1. Others may not care but having a class change from 3 shots pre-TBC to 1 shot is a big deal.

Perhaps we differ in our definition of raid involvement. I admitted BM was more micromanagement (as someone else stated), but I found a lot of the involvement was mostly frustration in getting the pet to act correctly. Something being a PITA to make work properly, and involvement with the raid, are two different things to me. Yes, it's a lot of work to keep your pet alive and active, while still doing damage yourself, but that's simply the pets being a problem. My definition of involvement is taking burst damage chances on a boss. Remember the MC days when you had to carefully use your aimed and multishots to not peel agro? Hunters don't have that burst DPS ability anymore. Hitting one button doesn't make me feel important to a raid's overall damage output. BM involvement is more of a nuisance than anything else.

With the changes to Kill Command in 2.1 does anyone have any thoughts on the value of a constant 600 armor penetration set bonus?

It might be worth sacrificing some upgrades to keep that set bonus, especially as BM.

It is actually a slightly better debuff for a marks hunter since your attacks ignore armor, not your pet's.

Right now im just following socket bonus's using 16 AP for red, 4 crit and 6 stam for blue, and finally 8 crit for yellow. Would it be worth it to replace the sockest with all 8 agi?

I've never tried the /0/38/23 spec but I'm intrigued having read the above posts. Is this what you had in mind?

I was trying out a BM build tonight following much of the advice in this thread. The first thing I did was help out two guildmates on alts on the path of conquest questline to get used to new bindings and such.

I just felt utterly neutered as a BM hunter. Scattershot and Silencing Shot are not raiding tools . . but without them I felt almost naked. Not having perma-traps with the beastlord bonus also just felt wrong.

I'm going to stick with it for at least one raid, but I just don't think I can cope with this as a hunter

I mainly came here to ask for clarification on two things though (and at 4 am I just can't bring myself to do the math). Do you just use a steady/auto cycle, or does the amount clipped from autoshot justify arcane shot as well when it is up? If yes, multi-shot too?

Second, under rapid fire + BW, how slow of a bow do you need to justify staying with an auto/steady cycle?

2.6 brings you to about 1.6s between autoshots
If you think your ping and reaction time can handle it, then thats optimal.
If not, 2.8 or 2.9 is probably fine.

Bear in mind that you will also occasionally get quickshot procs during rapid fire too - whether thats worth bearing in mind when choosing spec and weapon speed is another question of course.

Hmm looking at the 38/23 build, assuming you get 3 points into master marks, would you not be better off post 2.1 with going 36/25 and geting survival instincts. Same 4% ap boost for two talent points with the addtion of 4% damage mitigation.

Taz

I've read some very interesting comments in this thread and i'd like to post some of mine.
I have raided with all hunter specs (currently BM again). After 2.1 one thing is for sure, i am not going to be MM....

In this post i'll state some facts concerning BM and MM specs, i am aiming on pointing out some details that are often not mentioned and if taken into account, they surely make some talents seem less apealing than they seem with a first look.

I will not try to make a point about which spec is better, i just want you to consider some facts that most of times are left out, when people evaluate specs.


MM:
Being a BM or Survival speced hunter means that you usualy go into MM tree up to mortal shots (20 points), so you miss the talents that are beyond this.

1.Barrage and imrpoved barrage: the buffing of multi-shot's dmg is not as usefull as it may seem in theory, becasue multi shot doesnot contribute to hunter's total dmg by a that significant %. About 10-12% i'd say.

2.Master Marksman: the alchemy nerf will have an impact on the usefulness of this talent. I can run the numbers for you, but that would just make my big post even bigger. Do it yourself and see.

3. a general comment about the tree... As we get better gear, our AP will scale pretty good, but not our crit chance, on the contrary if you are Survival speced hunter then your crit will scale, maybe not with a great rate, but still it will scale. I am not sure how important this is, it's just a conclusion based on the mechanics of the MM tree, a conclusion i would like to insert in the discussion and hear your opinion about it.


BM:
A significant difference between MM and BM specs, based on the tree mechanics is the following:

It's easier for a MM hunter to take advantage of his talents and convert the theoretical benefit into raw dmg. What i mean is that talents which increase your AP, crit, % of dmg, e.t.c. (MM talents are like this) are simple straightforward talents. You can benefit 100% of such talents when dealing dmg. On the contrary, the +20% shooting speed increase of a BM, the buffing of pet's dmg, e.t.c. are talents that are affected by things like "shot rotation/cycle, time between special and auto shots, pet's survivability, e.t.c.". Such talents need special "handling" and you can't benefit 100% from them, which makes the BM spec a harder to play spec and a spec which makes your dmg fluctuate a lot on different boss fights, different raiding nights, e.t.c.

1. Serpent's swiftness' +20% speed increase is not a +20% dmg increase. This is a pretty obvious thing, but some hunters make this mistake. It increases auto shot and steady shot's dmg by about 20%. Analyze your shots and you'll see that auto shot + steady shot contribute to a BM hunter's total dmg by about 55%... so it's an about 10-11% total dmg increase.


---take into account that the numbers are rough estimates. Mostly i am trying to describe a more correct way of evaluating the importance/usefulness of certain talents---


2. BM tree buffs pet's dmg, while not buffing yours as much as MM tree does. One little detail, that usualy none mentions, is that you will not miss but your pet will miss quite often on boss fights (even with 2/2 Animal handler). You'll see this if you use swstats or recap and analyze the source of your total dmg in a boss fight, the misses/hits/e.t.c.

Which means that MM tree, which buffs your damage is not affected by missed shots... while BM tree that relies more on your pet's dmg, is greatly affected by misses (my pet's melee miss rate is about 20%). Additionaly, it's affected by glancing blows and pet's survivability.


3. one good thing is that your auto shot's casting time is 20% faster, which leads to less "lost time" between a special shot (like multi-shot) and an auto shot.

My experience so far is that playing a raiding hunter and dealing good DPS is far more complicated and hard, than some mages/locks/e.t.c. think... BM and MM specs are both good and viable raiding specs. BM will become more viable and stronger after 2.1

Which spec is better for one depends greatly on his playstyle, his effectiveness to use pet correctly, the nature of the boss fight, his raiding envinroment (raid setup, healers healing pet occasionaly or not...) and his current gear.

There are so many factors to take into consideration, that whoever claims that he can fully analyze these 2 specs and say for example that "BM spec is better in general" or the opposite thing, is propably mistaken.



One last comment about the relation between gear and spec, think the following...

Which spec benefits more from a 5% crit increase ? BM or MM ?

MM is the correct answer.



The answer to the question "which spec is better for one" depends greatly on one's gear, meaning on his current unmodified (by talents) AP and crit chance.

This question is a very hard one to answer and the answer is different for different people. All hunters should try both specs and use the one that works better for them.

I wouldn't reccomend MM after the 2.1 patch, unless something changes. BM and survival specs are geting a buff, while MM tree's usefulness gets an indirective nerf, due to the fact that we won't be able to buff our AP with elixirs/flask as much as we are able to do now.

I consider 2.1.0 patch as the rebirth of the Survivalist hunter...

Wouldnt say rebirth of survivalist, more like.. It's avaible for more people because it doesnt require buffs+pots and top notch gear to be viable.

Serpents Swiftness does not boost Steady Shot damage at all.
its a 1.5second cast and the GCD is 1.5 seconds - any Haste effect will speed up the cast time, but you still won't be able to fire another shot until the GCD is over.

You are right on this, i stand corrected.

Since this is correct, I think it's safe to conclude that under hasted conditions you need to stop using steady shot. I'd suggest the following general rule:
If your hasted attack speed drops below 1.5 + latency, then stop using steady shot and use arcane/multi as they come off of cooldown.
Thoughts?

If you are chain casting it, I guess it would make no difference. However, when trying to make sure you aren't clipping an auto, having its speed increased is still handy.

edit: unless there is something regarding auto and global cooldown? (not 0.5 hunter cooldown)

Yes Intermisson, you are correct there of course, and that is a benefit, although it is probably unique to BM as a MM hunter will be trying to slot 2 specials.

And what Iron says is also right although..I find that Multishot when lots of haste is active seems to be an even worse offender than steady for clipping the next autoshot(possibly due to some animation issues the same as autoshot)

In response to orsraunia's post: While I agree with most of what you said and I understand that English is your 2nd language, (I assume), [EU], etc. some things that were said didn't come across correctly to me. Regardless, what I gathered from it all is you're saying MM is a more laid-back 3 button rotational approach to "Huntering", while BM is a bit more involved because of pet dependencies. There are a few things that have actually ANNOYED me thus far from the 4-5 days since I've respecced from Marks. Basically, I hate having to ask Paladins for BOM/BOK for the pet. I almost feel bad doing this tbh... I even offered them some gold as a bonus to wasting reagents on my cat! Then, I realized its their friggen job and stopped giving a shit about it. Now I just bitch. =) One other thing, I've noticed that I can't use the damn pet on Solarian in TK. The friggen pet sucks up the debuffs and can cause nasty things to happen if they go unnoticed.

Bottom line....BM has been awesome DPS on fights where the mobs don't make it their duty to rip my pet's face off, and BM has been a horrible burden on fights where my pet can't be used without frequent and quick deaths. Overall, I love BM and I miss MM. Funny no? You get used to playing your class a certain way for 2 years and then change overnight to a spec you figure you'd never even consider because it has such a wow social stigma aka, (bm spec you fooking newblar /point /spit), but here we are with a 10,000+ views thread where obviously thousands of hunters are considering making the move to BM especially in 2.1. Whatever spec you are or choose, the class itself still needs help that can only come from the devs making much needed changes.

Its a logical move. One I have used while MM spec because my lag would not allow me to weave steady shots. Especially when bloodlust + rapid fire + Imp. AtoH + Abacus of the Violent Odds was used. I have pushed 3.3 speed weapons to machine gun speed, very useful when JoW is on the mob.

Right now to deal with my mana starvation, I have 1.8 speed weapon in my bags. I usually wait for cool down on Abacus and Rapid Fire before calling for JoW on the boss, then I pop my fast weapon in and use hastening attacks with auto attack only. I can regen quite a bit of mana this way, but yes my dps takes huge hit for next 15 seconds. I do this along with heavy use of Fel mana potions.

I went out to Blasted Lands last night on the PTR with a fellow hunter, and we tested specs. Both of us specced all three specs and went to town on a servant down there. My personal best dps was my full rotation as 7/41/13 while also using my pet. The other hunter's best dps was with a 41/20/0 spec. The most noticeable thing was that though his dps did go down slightly, he was able sustain his mana very well when he tried using nothing but steady shot and kill command.

Either way, both our personal bests when we went all out, I was at about 1180 dps as marks and he was around 1150 dps as BM using a full rotation. Now, these servants have very low armor so these numbers are obviously slightly off, and they are obviously not boss mods so you can consider the pets' dps would go down a decent amount due to misses and glancing blows. All things considered though, I really feel that the trees will be equally viable with different strengths and weaknesses. On some fights, a BM hunter will be stronger, and on some fights, a Marks hunter will be more successful.

Oh, and btw, both of us sucked as survival. He was able to get about 750 agi with LR, I was a little lower than this. Either way, neither of us were impressed at all.

Anyone know of an addon that displays attack speed- like maybe on the Titan bar? Just so I don't have to have my char screen open to check it.

I know I could memorize all of the haste effects and be able to calculate my in-fight haste by monitoring my current buff effects, but it gets pretty complicated when you're factoring in IAotH, Rapid Fire, Grull Trinket, or Bloodlust/Heroism.

So can I spam KC with my hasted Auto-Arcane shots without messing stuff up?

I disagree with the generality of this statement. If my auto shot is 1.5 seconds and my latency 100 ms (so basically SS would be considered a 1.6 second cast), I should cast steady if no other cooldowns are up. If I clip my auto shot by .1 seconds, I only lose .1 seconds, but I also gain an extra what 650 or so damage. If you consider in a fight your steady hits for about the same as an auto shot, it's like having a .1 second auto shot every now and then.

Now granted, it's hard to string in shots when you're shooting that fast, but if you're running your bars and you antiicipate your lag, it's a good move.

For survival spec you are aiming at synergy with rogues/warriors/ ehn. shamans in your raid. High agility and high crit rate will keep EW up quite a bit up there, allowing you to buff other physical damage dealers in your raid. With raids becoming more friendly to melee dps it would be good to bring something else to the raid that can buff them from range.


Serpica,

I have G15 and LCD on it displays my char-sheet stats, but as far as mods go I don't know. This may be expensive proposition though.

it depends how you look at it. serpents swiftness allows you to get more steady shots in per minute b/c autoshot is closer to the GCD than without.

Agreed that EW is a pretty solid raid buff, and I haven't done the math to figure out the increase of raid dps compared to the loss of personal dps and party dps from TSA. It's also less important if you usually run in raids with only a few melee classes and hunters.

Unfortunately 500ms latency often stops the use of steady+special with a 2.52 speed post haste. Its possible, but the GCD then carries into the next auto-cycle, reducing that to only an instant ability possible without clipping, so not worth the steady+special in the first place.

Sweet. I already use a G15 but I've been ignoring the LCD because all I was able to get it to do was display my memory and CPS usage, which are fine. What do I need to do to get it to display my character info?

Sorry for the newb questions inc but..
1) How does +crit affect my pet?
2) How does +AP affect my pet?
(I think my pet gets a % of my AP, no?)
3) Does my pet get a % of my stats like agi and sta or what?

I see your point and perhaps I was overly general with my statement. I consider 1.6 (latency-adjusted) to be on the border of using/not using steady shot; I hadn't really considered it because generally speaking I don't tend to get into the border area with my haste effects (and in the cases I do, it's definitely a judgment call because the rule doesn't really hold). More often than not either I'm clearly too fast for steady or clearly I'm slow enough to use it. Simple math time:

Speed with quiver/ss = 2.9/(1.15*1.20)=2.10
Speed with quiver/ss/quickshots = 2.9/(1.15*1.15*1.20)=1.83
Speed with quiver/ss/abacus = 2.9/(1.15*1.20*1.25)=1.68
Speed with quiver/ss/quickshots/abacus = 2.9/(1.15*1.15*1.25*1.20)=1.46
Speed with quiver/ss/quickshots/abacus/heroism(bloodlust) = 2.9/(1.15*1.15*1.25*1.20*1.30)=1.12

Generally during raids I have 200-250 ms ping, putting me squarely between quiver/ss/quickshots and quiver/ss/quickshots/abacus. I can say I have noticed clipping (not sure how much) of autoshots while under abacus w/o quickshots if I maintain my steady rotation - at that point I tend to switch to auto+arcane/multi (I haven't had issues with multi clipping my autoshots, although it appears others have - again, probably a judgment call). I do think as a general rule of thumb (with some flexibility) you can say that when attack speed < 1.5+latency you should switch to arcane/multi; clearly, however, there is a gray area that requires some judgment..

As a side note, I really really want to get a Dragonspine Trophy to test out (that + the full bouquet of haste effects easily pushes you into auto/arcane mode because you'll probably clip a shot with multi and definitely will with steady). The speed increase from that is pretty insane - when that procs if you manage to get abacus/quick shots going your attack speed drops like a brick (attack speed is around 0.89 with sunfury bow and quiver/ss/quickshots/abacus/heroism/dragonspine - good luck getting those stars to align though).

Latest drivers is what did it for me.

Don't forget Rapid Fire.

I knew I'd forget something. Even without considering rapid fire, however, more often than not you won't be in the judgment-call zone with respect to steady shot. If you put up rapid fire, you'll be faster than either abacus or quick shots (at about 1.5 speed with sunfury bow/ss/quiver). After lag I don't see the possibility of maintaining a full steady/auto rotation without clipping substantially. I guess my point is that while I may have oversimplified for certain cases, more often than not that rule will be true. Admittedly, however, there is a gray area (of varying size, as it is seems to me to be largely dependant on your latency) in which using steady is a judgment call.

Gladiator Xbow speed has been changed on PTR from 3.2 to 3.1, not sure if that has been mentioned.

You guys have missed a lot when you talk about cutting steady shot/specials out of your rotations. Unless you get down to pretty much unreachable speeds (or climb up to unplayable latency) it is always in your benefit to use steady/specials.

It breaks down to a pretty basic equation.

Average auto shot - A
Time between auto shots - T
Average steady shot - S
Delay added to auto shot - D

So if:

((A + S) / (T + D)) > (A / T) - keep firing steady shot

It is very, very hard to unbalance that equation to the right (the stop steady condition). Since steady and auto do similar damage, the delay added (D) would need to nearly exceed your time between auto shots (T). Rather you reach a state where haste effects aren't beneficial (but not detrimental, beyond tightening your timing).

Edit: A stupidly easy fix would be to have all haste effects also work on your global cool down. Since heroism/blood lust already do this (iirc) the code is there.

Edit2: All haste effects means our quivers too!

I can't test this right now, but how does in-combat range weapon swapping affect the GCD and the autoshot timer?

i have been BM all this week with a 2.7 weapon and things work out really well with a steady/auto rotation. imp hawk procs make the rotation nice and tight. the only issue is rapid fire is too much and clips my autoshots.. so i was consider swapping to a 3.0 for the duration of rapid fire. can this be done fluently?

It can be done fluently, itemrack can do it automagically actually. You can modify the priest triggers that check for spirit tap. Shot timer resets on swap and global cool is triggered.

I played around with it for a bit but it threw me off too much to be useful.

A benefit of skipping specials for a period of time (time between arcanes) would allow for a tick of Spirit-based mana regen. I don't think that makes up for the lost DPS, but if you are waiting for the cooldown on your Fel Mana Potion anyway stacking these haste effects can be useful to maintain some emblence of DPS.

First, thanks for comments (and definitely I agree, they should make all haste adjust the GCD). Your equation is correct, but your inequality is not representative of the argument. The A/T term is only for autoshot damage / unit time - the argument is whether autoshot + steady shot are better than autoshot+arcane+multi. A more representative equation would be

Average auto shot - A
Time between auto shots - T
Average steady shot - S
Delay added to auto shot - D
Arcane Shot Damage - R
Multishot Damage - M

So if:

((A + S) / (T + D)) > (A / T) + M / 10 + R / 6 - keep firing steady shot

Assuming, of course, that your multi isn't delaying auto and you fire every time the shots come off of cooldown. Running a spreadsheet (using my auto/steady/arcane/multi numbers from a gruul kill as typical raid buffed values for damage and adjusting for crits) with that equation (where I am firing no steady shots at all in the second rotation) I see pretty much exactly what I would expect - around 1.5 speed you see a peak in the difference between auto/steady and auto/arcane/multi. Auto/arcane/multi starts to gain ground on auto/steady below 1.5 attack speed and passes auto/steady somewhere around 0.9 attack speed.

So my conclusion is that the general rule I posited was a half-truth; there is a number around which you should consider changing rotation, but it was lower than I expected - around 0.9 in my case. It will vary depending on your average shot hits. I'm going to work on a comparison of these two rotations with one that I think people are more likely to use - one using steady/auto/arcane/multi on priority.

I believe Wind Serpents only get 6% of your RAP added to their spell damage now. I'm not sure if that's a rule specific to wind serpents and Lightning Breath, or if they updated it so all pets now get only 6% to spell damage.

+crit affects your pet by fueling more Kill Commands and more Focus (if you have GftT) for specials.

It's actually a lot less than that.

It used to be close to that because:
Pet got 12.5% added to their spelldmg
Lightning Breath is an instant spell, so it only receives about 43% of spelldmg.
43% of 12.5% is 5.375% of your RAP that got added directly onto LB.


BUT, with the lightning breath nerf, Lightning breath is only receiving about 5% of spelldmg.
So now you get about 5% of 12.5%, which is only .625% of your RAP added directly to LB.
It might as well not scale at all after the nerf.


You're still technically correct that pets recieve 12.5% of our RAP added to their spelldmg, but each spell receives a different percentage of that...
Percentages of Percentages.. no wonder our scaling is so bad.

If I am in a full burn rotation I never stop using specials. They simply substitute for the steady that would have been there. Although as BM it only gives me about 30 more DPS.

Everything is limited by the GC under extreme haste conditions. Shots don't slot evenly but you should almost never stop trying to fill a shot whenever possible, steady, multi, arcane, whatever your build/mana demands/cool downs require.

Have we confirmed this anywhere? I've been dying to find exact ratios to use, since I'm on the fence between Wind Serpent and Cat. How much LB scales (where Claw/Bite don't at all) would make the difference.

Also, is there any other pet ability that gets +spell damage?

The scorpian's sting I belive also receives a bonus from spell damage to its ability.

Just tested

Max 196 LB - 1563 AP
Max 182 LB - 433 AP

14 dmg gain - 1130 AP difference

1.24% AP -> LB damage

Since LB is an instant

1.24% / 0.43 = 2.88% of AP -> Spell damage

Might as well be 0%, any gains are more than canceled out by the stupid AI. Wait patiently for 2.1 and your 70 ravager.

Edit: Since it is hard to know how rounding factored in to this I would go with 3% AP to spell damage. The nerf was arbitrary, I can't imagine they picked a strange number like 2.88%

Did you account for Unleashed Fury? It would account for a 20% difference in apparent scaling if it is applied after scaling factors (from the wording it would appear to be the case, but I wouldn't assume it is). I ask because 2.88/1.2 would be 2.4 - which is a little bit less arbitrary in appearance. Then again, it seems pretty much moot since it's a such a small amount.

Both Osse and you have mentioned a level 70 ravager coming in 2.1, but checking every source I can think of (Thottbot PTR, Petopia, PTR forums /shudder), I'm not seeing where one has been put in.
Or is this simply a theoretical level 70 ravager, like a hunter without mana issues or the like?

3.1 speed pvp xbow makes it more attractive for pve. But damn, that sucks for pvp. Were we really golden pvp gods?

/qqing in the corner over a 3% change

My wish list:

All haste affects GCD (good call, Glaurong)

Make AOTV not suck.

Give some int->rap (.3/int?) as a base ability.

Itemization. Replace most mp5 with crit. No more than 3mp5 on any one piece of gear.

Faster base cast time for steady shot (1 sec?) so people don't have to get bored by BM -> steady only. Although haste affecting GCD on ranged attacks would mean this isn't needed.

Talent or innate pushback (damage increases casting time) resistance (does it benefit from conc. aura? Granted, you can't be silenced out of it, so probably not. If no pushback resistance, 1.5 sec is too long.

Reduced minimum shot range (fine, you can't shoot in melee ... but outside of melee, why not?).

Unnerf flare/trap - rogues own us already. If there were a talent I could buy to make hunter's mark resist getting purged off by vanish, I'd buy it. I'm about to macro up a "if my target exists, pet follow then attack" just to abuse the pet stealth bypass.

I keep hearing people say this... where are these lvl 70 ravagers?

Just checked Petopia (usually pretty accurate, in my opinion) and there is no mention of a level 70 ravager (although there is a level 61 ravager listed). Can anyone provide a source on the level 70 ravager info?

Something I noticed but forgot to mention earlier with my testing.

They fixed our lvl 70 pet's base crit chance, it is once again 5%

Edit: Dug around to try to find the reference but I may in fact be smoking something on the lvl 70 ravager thing.

Not sure if anyone has specifically mentioned this, but another reason for switching to BM post-2.1 would be the alchemy changes. In addition to MM not benefitting as much from consumables (which has been mentioned), most dps classes will have their dps essentially "nerfed". Since pets don't currently benefit from consumables (other than the 22% of your ap, still no pet food except sporeling snacks?), they should see an increase in dps compared to pretty much all classes in the raid (i.e. nerfing everyone else essentially buffs the pets, since they were largely unaffected by the nerf). Convincing healers (other than possibly Lifebloom spamming ToL's) that a pet actually contributes something worth spending mana on to the raid is another story.

The ideal situation for us hunters WOULD be if hunter dps varied per boss but was essentially equivalent at the end of the raid. Since the hunter role is (supposedly) dps, the difference in the trees should be situational effectiveness (although how blizz "looked at" the survival tree and left MT as is still baffles me). Shot rotations will always be a more powerful indicator of a change in dps, and a lot of the bigger differences we're seeing in people switching specs is most likely due to them being more comfortable in a shot rotation that is closer to the theoretical "optimal rotation" for their current gear/spec/latency/reaction time.

P.S. The lvl 70 Ravengers are a myth I am guessing?

I'm not gonna lie, I just respecced back to MM up until patch 2.1. The reason is it was hell in some places in TK, not usable in Gruul's lair basically, and some spots in SSC it was just insta death. I'm going to wait for the imp pet mend and avoidance and definitely revert back to 41/20/0 after patch. Right now it is just too stressful for these 25 mans.

I haven't had issues in Gruul's Lair, but I don't have experience in TK or SSC. Gruul is mostly about managing your pet - it's far from ideal and you don't really get much pet dps, but you can at least keep him up for FF if nothing else.

There's 70 ravagers in the new mine on that island where bloodmaws are. :P

They couldnt have made it more annoying though, full of 70 non elites and a 70 elite on the entrance. You cant just rush in unless you use invisibility pot or you'll have to res back on the main island so no corpse camping either. :|

And yeah, the ravagers are pretty far behind. Didnt check if they're tamable but at least there is ravagers in that mine, thats the main thing. :P

Howitzer, I read pretty much this whole post (missed a few) and was about to switch after reading it, but decided not to until 2.1. I'm rarely with a shadow priest so I'm sure my pet would be dying often. I do a lot of the pulling in our instances, and we're really starting to get into SSC now (first Tidewalker attempts last night). My question is, when you were BM without eagle eye, were there places in SSC/TK that were any more diffucult for you to pull? I would really like to go 41/20/0 after 2.1, but after seeing some of those crazy pulls up to Tidewalker, I'm wondering if I'll need the extra range to be pulling.

1. it doesn't, as far as i know (not 100% sure)
2. yes, your pet benefits from your AP, getting a % of it. Check your CS for the exact %.
3. your pet gets a portion of your Stamina, sadly it doesnot get anything out from your agility


If you are a BM raiding hunter keep the folowing in mind:

a. Your pet's attack power is not a lot compared to yours (e.g. you can have 1700 and your pet will have about 680 or something). So, Battle Shout, Blessing of Might, e.t.c. increase your pet's DPS a lot! they are very important. If it weren't for all those misses and glancing blows (glancing blows will get reduced after 2.1) the pet would do REALLY awesome damage fully buffed.

b. Your pet doesnot scale that good with your gear (correct me if i am wrong). Its crit chance and +% to hit donot scale. This means that its total dmg will not scale that good.

/bow

This is what i believe too.Blizard giving us haste effects, but not letting us fully benefit from them, is just plain stupid.

While other classes like mages, can fully benefit from them.

I still think that crit and hit should scale to pet, make say animal handler give say 15% scaling. :|

you miss the point imo... what personal loss of dps ? he he

0/20/41 hunters with appropriate gear setup, will soon outdps MM based hunters. Just wait and see.

http://surl.se/pictures/20075/40722.jpg

Rant US general like I did in EU please.

Having just specced to 41/20 for raiding, I'd have to say that Chain Healing is our pets' best friend at the moment, even more effective than shadow priests at times.

So far, I haven't missed much of my 41 yard range. Gruul is a bit painful if you're used to stand and shoot at one spot, and the murloc trash before Tidewalker can be a bit tricky, albeit doable with 35 yard range. I can't really comment on anything after that from a personal perspective.

Not necessarily a rant, but done:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...00371231&sid=1

Cheers

http://surl.se/pictures/20075/40735.jpg

There's a pic with "creature not tameable" text. :/

I read about a macro that starts your steadyshot right after your autoshot is fired. Could anyone enlighten me on when to use it and what the macro looks like?

Wow. The only thing I can say is either this is just another in a long string of hunter-related oversights or someone at Blizzard is just pain malicious towards hunters. I'm leaning towards this being a simple mistake, but gees, talk about silly little things.

The only pulls that might pose a problem for you are the murlocs that circle around inside Tidewalker's room. If range is an issue I usually just use eye of the beast and pull surgically with the pet. The loss of 6 yds can be felt, yes, but I didn't have any issue with this in a "PVE" setting otherwise. It didn't "gimp" me at all, put it that way.

I'd seriously not use this, mate. You're way better off learning when to time your shot weaving manually than through this macro because these things will just end up making you lose shots in the long run trust me.

Run a 10 minute long test in Blasted Lands or Dr. Boom with and without the macro Howitzer, I'll put a chunk of money for the macro.

I don't think that's the point - the macro is merely a tool to test with whereas he's saying (and I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth here) "learn to shoot your shots during actual play and you'll do better in the long run". I agree with Howitzer (assuming I understand him correctly).

Thats exactly what I'm saying Welshy. I think if you're having problems with shot rotations you shouldn't use a macro as a crutch to learn how to TBC Hunter, (since its quite different than prior to 2.0). Better off learning it manually and then using a macro later if you feel you need it due to lag on your end or whatever.

The macro cannot decide how much time you've got left until your auto shot. The macro prevents ALL clipping. Therefore, even if I'd only clip my autoshot by .1 seconds to get in a steady, it won't cast it. Human judgement > macro. If you need a macro like this to keep up in dps, you either do not understand the math behind efficient cycles and will never do the dps you should, or you're extremely lazy and will still never keep up in dps.

If I were to use that macro it would be during times where I had some overlapping haste procs where i was unsure where my latency cutoff point was.

That's an excellent point, but here's my counterpoint: If you have 0.1 seconds before clipping an autoshot, you have very little time to react and will probably not approach the theoretical benefit minor clipping would give you. Assuming you KNOW your next shot will clip the autoshot by a tiny amount ahead of time, lets say you know right after you fired your last shot. You now have 1.5 cast time on steady (I'm using steady, perhaps considering arcane or multi would be better?) plus your latency plus your reaction time to get a shot in. I realize that I probably don't have the fastest fingers or best reaction times, but that feels like a very tight squeeze; I'd wager the vast preponderance of raiding hunters wouldn't approach the theoretical benefit of minor clipping. My guess is that most would probably delay the autoshot by enough that they would net less damage.

I'm not trying to endorse using a spam macro (again, I think they are purely testing tools), but realistically when you're getting down to tenths or hundreths of a second in terms of timing, actual practice becomes divergent from theory.

I will admit that I have very low latency and very high reaction time, but there's a simple trick. I keep two bars going, Lemme post a screen real quick to show you an example:

http://imageigloo.com/images/5179Bars.jpg

If you have no instants up, and you think your steady will be close to the auto shot, start it and don't decide yet. You'll see your timers up, if they are very close (like the .2 seconds in this image), let your steady go through. If it's too big of a clip, just step forward, and the steady will be interrupted and the auto will go through on time.

I have a similar set up (I don't have a screen to prove it, but I use the "racing bars" method), but I still find that under raid circumstances (~15-20 FPS and 200-250 ms ping) I simply don't have the reaction times to make the squeeze. I fully acknowledge that the circumstances will be different based on player (FPS and ping, that is), but I maintain that most hunters probably won't approach the theoretical benefit (although I agree that the theory does say sometimes clipping yields higher dps).

I think the moral of the story is: practice your shots and learn the rotation. Then do it again. It's the single most important aspect of raiding as a hunter (assuming you're not some kind of weird melee hunter or something). Also, set up your UI so you can see the relative cast times of auto and steady shot (I recommend the 'racing bars', but w/e works for you).

I don't quite understand this part. If I were to press the macro and fire an Auto Shot, wait until there is one second left to fire the next Auto Shot, and I press the macro again, the macro's Steady Shot will begin and clip the next Auto Shot. It doesn't exactly prevent all clipping - it only does so if you're pressing nothing but the macro as fast as you can.

As a Beast Mastery hunter (and even when I was Marksmanship), it wasn't like I could fit in two Steady Shots between auto shots, so I didn't normally encounter the part where I get within .1 second of clipping the next Auto Shot if I were to use a(nother) Steady Shot instead (clipping does happen when I try to use a second special after Steady Shot and before the next Auto Shot, but by firing the second special, I wasn't pressing the macro anyway). If I couldn't fire a Steady Shot immediately after an Auto Shot, say because of global cooldown from squeezing a second special, and I start the Steady Shot late to a point when I will clip the Auto Shot, then the Auto Shot will still be clipped.

The macro does allow for human interaction. We can judge if we should clip an Auto Shot to squeeze in the Steady Shot.

I often have latency around 50 and 60 fps. Now.. No matter how perfectly I time the shots using two bars the macro just does more.

I died on the kill go so here's a wipe on Mag, data parsing started when last add died.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=igbirszq25mh5&m

I think thats enough of dps tbh.

And yes, I was clicking. Two groups were handling that.

I agree with some of what Howitzer is preaching (learn the damn class and learn to play it manually before you use tools that do things for you), but I don't get the argument being presented against using the macro. The only argument that makes sense for not using the macro is a situation where you have high latency and you need to cast the steady *before* the Auto goes off. But in normal circumstances (normal for me, anyway), there is no way I could beat the macro for reaction time. I've tried, and I can't do it. And I will go on to suggest that 99% of human beings can't beat it, either.

If you start a Steady and want to cancel it because of your racing bars (I use the same setup, though I like the way your bars look, Bhoris, what do you use?), you can still cancel it if you're using the macro. The only thing the macro is helping you do is cast Steady immediately after Auto fires. You still have to know when you can and cannot use Steady (such as under heavy haste buffs).

I use the same thing. I have 2 bars going, one cast bar is part of AG-UF which appears right under my HP bar as well as my target's casting bar, the other is big trouble, you can see them here:

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/6484/ssvh3.jpg

Off-topic, but I'm curious as to why you use the DS gloves?

Yours haven't dropped and the Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation I want haven't gone to me yet because of filthy rogues. (I'm not perfect you know =\) Hell, T5 gloves are in reach now. Just a matter of time before I replace these T4 gloves and my shitty T4 shoulders.

Bhoris, what mod are you using for this? I've been using zHunter so far because I like the aspect switching portion, but I don't think there's an option for comparing the steady-shot cast time.

QFT. I was the OP of the big /castsequence thread in the hunter forms. I posted my rotation macro for my 3.00 speed bow with 5/5 Imp Arcane as an example. Since then I've seen dozens of hunters wondering why the macro doesn't work well for them and their 2.80 bows with 0/5 Imp Arcane. Every day I get lvl 1 alts whispering me and asking me to design a macro for them. Ok, rant off.



You will be able to time shots better manually than with a macro, no doubt there because you can time the steady before the auto goes off. The problem is, that will only start to make a difference when you get into the 2.5 - 2.4 range with iAotH. Currently, all the good epic bows leave a generous amount of slack in the rotations, so the advantage of better timing makes no difference. If Blizz releases some high DPS 2.50 bows then I'll consider manual timing.

My steady shot is just using the default cast bar modded by ECasting Bar (http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downl...-for-wow-2-0/), and then Big Trouble for the auto shot cast bar (http://www.wowinterface.com/download...gTrouble.html). The default for BT is to show the cast bar for Aimed Shot and Steady Shot also, but just turn these off and let the default cast bar handle these, and BT will show you just the auto shot cast bar.

When is arcane shot used? Do you avoid it most of the time and then use it when you have (stacking) haste procs (IAotH + Rapidfire). Do you save it for a movment shot when you have to reposistion? Or, do you use arcane in a regular rotation?

I think the difference in our interpretation of "prevents clipping" is based on the usage of the macro, not the macro itself. If I turn on autoshot and then try to use the macro, I can force it to clip. If I use the macro to enable autoshot after I fire my first steady, it won't clip.

As far as the macro itself is concerned, I really don't see a point in using it if you're marksman. You have to wedge a second special in before the auto, so the steady macro doesn't really aid you in preventing delay of the autoshot (unless you just spam the hell out of the steady macro and then try to wedge your second special in between button presses, which is kind of a brute force method to things). Once you start to stack haste effects, though, the macro really shines (although you have to tune the macro to reset the timing on it to suit your hasted conditions). Under some extreme cases of stacked haste if you maintain a steady rotation then you either have to be very good at timing shots (I'm not) or be willing to use a macro. Or stop using steady shot.

The point is that you can't just say "I stink at hunter but if I use a macro it'll be OK." It won't. You have to learn to play the class, and that takes practice and time. (I should note I consider myself as a bad hunter, though, so I don't feel condescending when I preach about practicing to improve)

I simply use eCB and LittleTrouble and make the cast bars with exact same settings. Same Width, Heigth etc.

I use LittleTrouble under PitBull unit frame for my character. PB comes with casting bar so it makes it easy to time shots now and LT mod is light weight I love it.

When I was Marks, I would spam the macro (it's on my mouse scroll wheel, up and down, so it's super-easy to spam), then stop when Steady starts. Then hit Arcane or whatever, then start spamming again. When haste is active, I just stop putting the second special between Autos. You really only have to spam it right around when Auto is about to fire to get Steady going ASAP after Auto.

PS - I'm just talking about basic Steady/Auto castsequence, not a full rotation with everything and the kitchen sink.

The nice thing about the /castsequence macros is that it allows you to focus more on what is going on around you in the current raid setting, and concentrate more on movement, traps, interupts, your pet, stings, etc. rather than focusing so intently on the shot rotation that you wind up out of position and dead, or, alternatively, you screw up your shot rotation worrying about whatever else it is hunters are supposed to do other than dps.

Also, since you asked for an example, here is an example of the simplest form of steady/auto:
#show Steady Shot
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot,Auto Shot

And a slightly more complex one (not in game to check, one of mine looks something like this) that follows a special-auto-2special-auto-special-auto-2special...etc. to work in some specials while limiting the clipping effect of the GCD:
#show Multi-Shot(Rank 6)
/castsequence reset=3 Multi-Shot,Auto Shot,Steady Shot,Auto Shot,Steady Shot,Arcane Shot,Auto Shot,Steady Shot,Auto Shot,Steady Shot

Obviously no macro will be "perfect" because you only get 250 characters or whatever, so eventually your rotation will need to repeat, and there really is no perfect junction for this for most weapon speeds that incorporate both Arcane and Multi. The best way to make a macro or series of macros is to go out to Area 52 and waste a bunch of ammo on Dr. Boom. Do your shots manually, with the entirety of your focus on timing your shots perfectly following some sort of pattern (i.e. not using multi-shot, when RF is active, full-dps without regard for mana/clipping, or something almost as high in dps but slightly more mana efficient, etc...). Basically, do your shots however you would normally trigger them if attention was focused on nothing but your 4 shots (multi-arcane-steady-auto) and their CD's/cast bars. Once you run OOM or find yourself getting into a pattern, go back into your combat log and basically copy your combat log into a macro. Now go test it out, while spamming your newly created macro, look to see where the potential downfalls might be. Are you clipping auto-shot? Is multi-shot or arcane shot off cooldown for extended periods of time? Use recap, swstats, or any dps counter of your preference and see what your dps looks like with a variety of different macros. Don't be afraid to try something that seems illogical at first, with the variety of weapon speeds and latencys out there you never know.

Now, let's say you found what you think to be a semi-decent macro or two. Now try spamming the macro and looking for the holes in which to perform additional abilities such as stings/traps/trinkets/RF with minimal loss to dps. If you find yourself regularly clipping auto-shot and loosing dps when you fit in a sting, create a macro that allows you to stop spamming for a second and fit in an additional ability. Find where to break off from your macro, move a few yards, and start it up again without getting "that ability is on cooldown" errors.

Now I'm not saying that a macro will ever increase your flat dps in a trial run, even my most heavily used/trusted macros will do slightly lower dps than if I focus my full attention to a more synergized manual shot rotation. However, if you've made a good macro, the difference will be slight. Yes, sometimes if you give a noob hunter a macro for his weapon speed, he will just sit there spamming it with no regard to what is actually happening or what shots he is using, and if he sucked to begin with, his dps will probably go up, but it will never compare to the person that created the macro in the first place and understands how it fits into what he wants to do.

So if you're thinking that this sounds like a lot of work for something that I've told you will lower a smart hunter's dps, why do it in the first place? Well, because frankly some of us (me) can't multi-task very well. When you're watching your health, your consumables, your trinket cooldowns, your pet's health, or especially when leading a raid watching other people's positions, it can sometimes become too overwhelming to watch your own cast-bars as closely as you would under ideal situations. My personal experience is that I end up doing a more damage in a raiding environment using a variety of macros even though I can do slightly more damage with a manual rotation on Dr. Boom tests. Leading a raid + focusing entirely on cast bars leads to either poor dps or other people doing stupid things.
Note: If you are more uber than me you'll do more damage without them, but for us noobs, macros are the way to go

Bah, just realized this is getting way off-topic. I'll bring it back by saying a reason against going BM is that I'll have to spend another few hours creating new macros with the 20% increase. I'm not sure how to work Kill Command into a macro, I would recommend just binding it near your other macros and spamming it whenever you're not in the act of firing steady.

/cheers

what does the /castsequence reset = 3 in the macro mean?

and how to adjust this for being BM?

Well I agree that using this macro have removed alot of the "skill" by playing a hunter.. but also I was not able to

Keep my shot rotation
Keep an eye on my pet
Keep an eye on the battle
Etc.

So now I use something like /castseqence reset=3 autoshot, steady shot

And that made me 6 or 7 on damage meters infront of our 2 hunters who have particually better gear :/ you may argue that came to easy.. but I just wanna do alot of damage.

If you don't push anything for 3 seconds, the macro resets to the first spell in the cast sequence. That's what the reset does.

i tried the /castsequence macro the last 2 days, for the first time...
it's good if you have latency and you are just standing nuking a boss, but in a lot of boss fights
you have to do more than stand and nuke.

i tested it on Dr. Boom, it didn't increase my dps when i had low latency, but if you have medium latency it helps so you reduce the time between auto shot and the next special.

Honestly, after switching to BM I stopped using the macro completely. The timing, unless under stacked haste effects, isn't that tight. Since you're not trying to fit two specials between autos (nor would you be able to do so without significant clipping) you can easily fit a single steady or arcane between autos. Likewise, the reset time will probably be a detriment if you frequently get a variety of haste effects (due to inconsistency in attack speed and consequently auto/steady rotation).

I'll bring it back to what has been mentioned before: set up your ui to show racing bars. You need an autoshot timer right below your cast bar; doing so gives you a very very good representation of the rotation timing. I can't recommend this highly enough. The best part of setting things up this way is that once you are accustomed to it, you can time shots by looking at it out the corner of your eye, giving you more flexibility to focus on the actual fight.

As far as which autoshot timer goes, I recommend littletrouble. Bigtrouble apparently is having coding issues and zhunter seems kind of like overkill (although admittedly I have very little experience with zhunter). Littletrouble is lightweight and easy to configure - and looks nice when coupled with pitbull. If you don't have two timers, try it.

i am very interested in this, how can i do this ? do i need a specific UI ? if yes, please reccomend me one (atm using a custom ui, made with Ctmod). Thanks in advance.

http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php...&postcount=255

Check the screenshot in this post. It's very easy to do: just get an autoshot timer (again, I prefer littletrouble but bigtrouble or zhunter will probably do just fine) and put it very close to your cast bar. When you start to cast steady or another shot, you'll be able to see if you'll clip the autoshot and if so by how much.

I can understand using the macro with a 0/4x/x build without the fear of quick shot procs messing up your rotation on your /castsequence macro. But I agree with you, with a BM spec it is way too hectic at times to rely on a macro as I believe you'll get way more DPS out of your rotations if you're manually timing everything on the fly.

Anyways, on topic, I made a thread on the Test realm forums hoping that the devs actually read concerns there. Since this thread and other ones on this forum have so many people who know a lot about the class I think you should voice your concerns there as well. Who knows if Tigole will actually read this thread and the other ones here at EJ? =)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...01280450&sid=1

I really liked your post, well constructed, adresses the real problems of our class.

The issue is that a lot of people flame posters like you, even when the posts are constructive ones, becasue they are "scared" of hunters getting a fair buff and thus, those who are at the top of their game, being able to outdps mages/rogues/warlocks (of equal value of gear).

BUT, dps is not our only issue, utility is. solution ?

1. Buff Misdirection in a way so 1st shot misdirects 3x threat, 2nd shot 2x threat, 3rd shot 1x threat. (increased utility)
2. Make silencing shot able to interupt bosses' spells, when they are immune to silence or make scatter shot an interrupt. (increased utility)
3. Expose Weakness to give +SD against the target, in addition to the AP it grants. (better synergy)
4. TSA to grant AP + some SD (increased synergy).

These are just some thoughts... i mean if i can come up with some ideas in like 5 min, how is it possible the devs of our class to have none solution after so long time that these problems (utility of our class) exist ?

What i wish is devs to go through the same endeavour, a hunter trying to get a raiding guild goes through. Maybe then they will understand...

In line with other "alternative buffs" I'd say make EW similar to FI: simply increase all incoming damage to the target by a fixed percentange. That would make survival a very valuable raid spec - even if the damage were low (not saying it is) it could provide a nice raid buff to make up the difference. Really it would be all that different from blood frenzy - just decrease the percentage and make it apply to all incoming damage.

I agree, however: if they are unwilling to buff our damage to be competitive, at least increase our utility.

fine with me, as long as it stays a talent that scales as good as it does now.
Actually, we need more talents that scale as good as EW does.

Well, the thing that bothers me, (and always has), is the straight up lack of responses from the developers or even a lowly CM on the hundreds and thousands of threads across the web about these concerns. The BM tree is obviously getting a little love in this next patch but the problems are so much deeper than that as you all know. A simple acknowledgment from a blizzard rep to let me and others know that our input and hours of testing and theorycrafting the class is not in vein.

This may not be the right place to discuss this, but here are my thoughts on that: I theorycraft because I like thinking about math and games. Optimization and modeling are interesting to me (even if I'm not the best at it - which I'm certainly not). However, when you have a community of passionate people who spend many hours testing and verifying theory that they've spent many hours developing, you shouldn't dismiss them.

Now, I'm not saying we're being dismissed nor do I expect the developers of the game to bend to my (or our) whims. If they disagree with our concerns or have plans to take things a different way, I'm ok with that. If they feel they don't have to respond to the concerns we raise, I'm ok with that (god knows how many threads get spawned to complain about some buff or nerf, whether slight or great, perceived or actual). I also recognize that it is not an easy job to communicate between the developers and the players; someone always wants to put your head on a platter. It's tough.

However, a simple acknowledgment of the effort put forth by the community at large would be nice. Even saying "We recognize that many of you have spent a great deal of time discussing issues that you believe exist with the game. We're always looking to improve the game and will take these under consideration, but understand that ultimately any changes that are enacted have to originate from the development community within the company. Thank you for showing your continued interest in aiding in the development of the game and know that we ARE listening and seeking input from the player base." Yes, it's PR speak, but it's better than the relative silence to which we've grown accustomed.

I feel that the reason we rarely, if ever, recieve feedback on our concerns is the fact that Blizzard has NO idea what they want to do with our class.

They keep applying band-aids in hopes that they get a better idea, or get close to the "fixed" mark, but keep falling short.

I was formulating a long post with many questions, and as is often the case, I answered most of them as I thought through the post. However, I would still be much obliged if one of the more experienced hunters in this thread could either run a few things through a spread sheet or point me to a post where these have already been run through. Beind at work, I do not have the time at the present to really flesh these out.

Rotation 1 - this is what I assume those testing the new BM raid spec are using.

2.9-3.1 speed weapon

Tight MM rotation weaving arcane and multi in between auto/steady (made tighter by SS)
switching to straight steady, auto during special hastes.

Rotation 2 - a comparable alternative?

2.1-2.4 speed weapon

strict steady, auto as close to the edge of 1.5 with base haste as possible
switching to auto, arcane/multi during special hastes.

My main questions are about Rotation 2.

1)If Rotation 1 is the standard, how does 2 compare in terms of DPS, DPM? (aside from being nearly fool-proof with a steady, auto castsequence macro)
2)Are special hastes(IAotH, RF, Trophy, etc) wasted on Rotation 2?
3)Is there an increase in shots per minute in Rotation 2 and thus procs of IAotH, GFTT, Mark of Conquest, JoW, etc?
4)Is there any reason a hunter might switch between these mid fight? (for example if 2 turns out to be more mana efficient at a minimal dps loss)

I realize this is a bit of work on the modeling side, but I am hoping some reasoned estimations might be in order. I apologize if I am missing the answers to these questions. Perhaps they are more obvious than I realize.

It's more that they are afraid to redesign the class mechanics, I guess. Stuck halfway between melee and caster dps as we are..

I currently use a 2.6 speed bow - Lohn'goron. Partly this is because only 2 higher DPS weapons have dropped for me - the 2.4 from Shattered Halls (Skyfire) and the 3.0 from Black Morass (Twilight Longbow). With static haste (SS + Quiver) the 2.6 bow is 1.88. In practice I can't seem to cycle my steady faster than about 1.9 anyway with static haste, so that bow seems pretty optimal. Any slower and I'd either waste time or have to fire much less mana efficient shot. Any faster and I'd absolutely be wasting time.

Procs seem roughly ok for me. I don't get the full benefit, since my reaction time + lag delay is constant, but at least the steadyshot cast gets faster too. And as far as damage goes, I seem to do just fine, competing reasonably with the other hunters, who are MM and using Wolfslayer + Prince Bow.

I have been worried about spending DKP on the Dragonspine trophy until I get a slower bow - right now it seems like I just wouldn't get enough benefit out of it. Ideally I think I'd want a 2.7-2.8 speed bow - I'd waste a little time on steady-auto cycles, but get full benefit out of haste cycles, and have a little more leeway for post 2.1 kill command.

I just found it personally impractical to use a 2.4 speed base bow. Yeah, with anticipating lag on the autoshot bar etc I could sometimes get those shots in faster, but I'd also clip shots occasionally, and I'd much rather lose 10% of my time every shot than clip 10% of my shots, since they do around the same damage but the second costs me more mana.


NOTE: My damage amounts are based on anecdotal, not rigorously tested experience. My bow timings however are based on actual combat logs (I've still got all 3 bows in case mechanics change)

I think the prime example of hunters being ignored is the feign death issue. After the change on this (ie the 2 to 3 second delay between hitting it and actually dropping combat), I figured this was just another intended class change that they never specifically state. Then, Blue confirmed it as a bug.

The next month, early February, we were reassured that

Yet, FD has not been addressed in game or in the patch notes. Not only that, but they haven't even remarked on the issue since this post.

Source: http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/65156879.htm

I have a question regarding stat selection with BM spec.

I am in the process of resocketing some of my gear, mainly the Ebon Netherscale set. So far, from my 1+ weeks of personal experience, my pet makes up about 1/4 to 1/3 of my total damage output. Since 22% of my RAP goes to pet AP, and frenzy/BW scales with pet AP, it makes sense for a BM hunter to stack AP.

However, I have always been a fan of crit over RAP. When i was marks, I was running with 2100 RAP and 27% crit self buffed. While pet is 1/3 of my damage, 2/3 of the damage still comes from me shooting. Stacking AP gems makes me feel like that I'm gimping my own damage in the process of buffing the pet. With BoK readily available in raid (so it is comparing 1.1 agi to 2 ap), and considering GFTT and Hourglass procs, I still find myself socketing my gears with +8 agi over +16 ap.

Now the above outlines my limited understanding of the BM spec, and I am wondering if any of you here can shed some light for me regarding the issue.

I would balance the two. Make sure your hit rating is maxed since you have no surefooted, make sure you're at or between 1750-1900 self buffed RAP as BM, and try to maintain a 25% crit rating at least with raid buffs / pots, etc. If you do that, you should be good to go. I would never stack totally on RAP, thats not logical.

What blue socket would you suggest using? I plan on re-socketing all my items for 2.1, and just follow the socket color.

What im thinking is rotating the 16 AP gem and the 8 agi gem so i keep a balance.

Anyway, my real concern are the blue and yellow gems.
blue - 4 crit and 6 stam or 4 agi and 6 stam - leaning towards 4 agi one : /

yellow - 8 crit rating or 4 agi and 4 hit - if my his isn't at 5% then ill probally do the hit one, otherwise im thinking 8 crit rating.

all input would be appreciated.

I would personally go with the 4 agi 4 hit if not at the hit cap (8.6%).

Blue sockets are horrible for DPS gears. If the socket bonus is comparable to what you lose for matching socket color (such as in the case of Gloves of Quickening, where you lose 1 Agi and gain 4 Stam), I'd almost always use 4Agi one over 4Crit. Otherwise, for something such as Ebon Netherscale Breastplate, I'd ignore the socket bonus and go with 3 rubies.

Rating for rating, Hit always > Crit when you're not at the max hit cap of 8.6%. Also, Agi is almost always superior than crit, unless you have insane amount of RAP with gimpy crit %.

If you are going to replace them with 2.1, I suggest

Infused Nightseye
+8 Attack Power and +2 Mana every 5 seconds
"Matches a Red or Blue Socket."

for the blue gems.

Are there any new red/yellow gems that are interesting to get specifically for us in 2.1? I see this new Infused Nightseye but haven't noticed the others. I know about the new Consortium metagem which will be sweet.

http://www.whataboutpp.com/index.php...daa9&topic=8.0


Look at the rare gems with the new Noble Topaz and a Nightseye. I don't know how to link items or I would have.

[Wicked Noble Topaz]: +4 Critical Strike Rating and +8 Attack Power | Red / Yellow

thats a pretty good yellow gem.

so it looks like ill be rotating 8 agi and 16 AP for red

for blue
[Infused Nightseye]: +8 Attack Power and +2 Mana every 5 seconds | Red / Blue

and for yellow
[Wicked Noble Topaz]: +4 Critical Strike Rating and +8 Attack Power | Red / Yellow

8 agi / 40 agi = 0.20% crit
0.20 * 22.1 = 4.42 crit rating

So an 8 agi gem is 8 AP and 4.42 crit rating, whereas the noble topaz is 8 AP and 4 crit rating. Minor difference, but 8 Agi is still better.

8 agi = 8.8 agi in raids, 10.12 if you're survival. :p

Dunno, I'm still leaning heavily towards full BM when 2.1 hits man. Its just been murder on the PTR with DPS testing.

I know this isn't a 2.1 issue, but do pets chain flame wreath again? I've heard that they'd accidently changed it back to how it was. I'd like to respec BM tonight and try it out(since 1k latency ruins my shot rotation, and hopefully BM will help that, and offload some of my dps to my pet) but I also don't want to see my pet get the raid wasted either.

I can speak to this: I had been using my pet on Aran with no issues at all up until last week, when he set off a flame wreath. As far as I can tell, the only thing I did differently was resurrect my pet (I don't remember why, just that I resurrected him) and it set off the flame wreath in which I was standing. The typical rule of thumb I use is "No one can enter or leave a flame wreath without setting it off", but since my pet hadn't been detonating the raid I didn't think it was an issue. I doubt I'll be able to test it tonight when we do Aran, but I'll ask the raid if they mind if I test it (or perhaps testing this would be better done on the PTR, I don't know).

So as far as I'm concerned, there are a couple possible issues:
1) resurrecting a pet sets off flame wreath
2) they changed things so pets now detonate flame wreath all the time
3) we all were incredibly lucky and never set off a flame wreath before, and nothing has changed

I would say 1 and 2 are far more likely, but I don't have enough evidence to conclude between those two.

Did some more tests on 2.1 PTR.

Builds used:
MM: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=VxbZVEoRVzGestch
BM: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=meb00xgRwuVoVxbRV

Results (SWS 2.1 Beta):
MM High ~ 895 DPS
MM Low ~ 850 DPS
MM Pet ~ 120 DPS

BM High ~ 860 DPS
BM Low ~ 820 DPS
BM Pet ~ 250 DPS

How:
I pulled badlands mob, let pet gain around 10k threat and then in "same" secound: started rotation, marked target and turned on SWS counting. After around 2min (HM end and/or OOM) I turned off SWS. Did 3 tries each build, then removed crit and calculated avarange, then added assumed crit and miss ratios (see notes).

Notes:
- High: arcane9, multi6, steady1
- Low: multi1, steady1
- One special between autos (2 are impossible due to 500ms ping)
- KC not used (I think it is crap + reason above)
- MM 21,5% crit (due to barrage), BM 20% crit, MM pet 5% crit, BM pet 15% crit
- MM/BM hunter 0% miss, MM pet 8.6% miss, BM hunter 4.6% miss
- -5% to pet damage due to 2.1 glancing
- victim was good old badlands mob (but with crit/miss adjusted after)
- DPS lasted ~2min, HM active (0 stacks at start), rapid fire, trinket and BW used once per 2min
- Gear was mix of T5 + phoenix bow (with +12 scope)

Conclusion:
Which is better? Answer is: "Depends on encounter". MM is safer and also uses less mana. On the other side BM can outdps MM while encounter is pet friendy.

Anyway what concerns me is very poor damage/mana with high rank shots used. If you look at results we gain ~10% damage for DOUBLE mana usage. I think something is terribly wrong here...

Sometimes I think Blizzard want us to be that way:
Turn on Viper, put HM on target and spam steady!

EDIT: Forgot 5% dodge for pets. Now I am thinking about real % of pet dps due to pet unfriendly encounters/abilities, positioning (parry) etc. I think 50% would be safe to assume? Also MM hunter probably scale better with raid buffs.

I'm wondering what encounters ARE pet friendly. The main bosses I have seen are
Maulgar- pet not really useful as I'm typically tanking the shaman guy in NR gear, I suppose I can switch the pet to hit the dps target but typically I just try to keep the shaman situated
Gruul- Dies to stone/cave in quite often
Magtheridon- Dies to adds but if you are vigilent it can survive Magtheridon himself provided the blast waves are stopped immediately, and Magtheridon doesn't conflag the pet too much
Hydross- seems to die once he gets the Poison Dot
Tidewalker- Dies to earthquake
Karathress- not too bad, priest boss AOE chews him up a fair amount but this one isn't that bad
Void Reaver- seems to die pretty quickly to melee Pound

I haven't been on the PTR to be honest so I don't know how big of a benefit the new HOT and avoidance are going to be, but it seems that you would almost always have to have that HOT up for it to be able to heal enough to keep the pet alive. I know that right now it is too much of a mana drain to try to Mend pet everytime it gets hit by conflag/earthquake/ground pound.

All in all I am very excited by what I read here and think the community has supported that on pet friendly encounters BM is superior to Marksmanship. However, I'm wondering if there are enough pet friendly encounters to justify this. From what I have seen there is not.

Last week my pet set off the flame wreath. Was in melee range with Aran - flame wreath was cast hitting a couple melee - Aran moved - the pet moved to stay in melee and boooom.

For now I am dismissing or leaving my pet on stay for the encounter.

I really can't argue too much with you, since my guild hasn't cleared Magtheridon yet and I have no SSC/TK experience. I can say that many of the fights in which a pet IS usable don't really feel as though they benefit from the extra dps all that much. What I mean by that is that for many fights where I can keep my pet alive, a rogue, fury warrior, or enhancement shaman more than makes up for the damage I gain by being able to stay in melee and keep pounding the boss. I guess this isn't clear, but let me make an analogy:

My Honda Civic goes faster when it gets gas, but a Ferrari would go faster with gas. If you liken the ability of classes to stay in melee on certain fights to gasoline, you quickly see how a Honda Civic (BM) becomes a less desirable option to a Ferrari (heavy melee dps). Perhaps I'm rambling, let me wrap this up. I'm not sure of the percentage of encounters where you can EASILY keep your pet alive (you can keep your pet alive on any encounter by dismissing him, but that's irrelevant). I DO know that BM is more dps than MM with the pet alive. It now becomes a question of economics: Do I take the small gain for the majority of fights or do I take the large gain from BM on the minority of fights where my pet doesn't die quickly?

We had a snake from a snake trap set off flame wreath last week.

I've always acted as if my pet could set off flame wreath - I just hit STAY as soon as I see it casting and turn it back off afterwards. So I can't tell you if you're hitting issue #2 or #3, but I'm pretty sure you're not hitting issue #1.

Aran is in fact almost my ideal "difficult to handle pet but possible" encounter. Everything can be done with stay/follow attack/passive. You can't use him all the time (Flame Wreath unless no melee gets it, arcane explosion, etc), but you can use him a lot of the time. It gives me something difficult but possible to manage. I like Prince for the same reason.

I recently respecced BM with another hunter just to test it out. 2p Riftstalker set bonus helps a lot (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=37499). 15% proc rate, although I have not seen it crit, but I havent really been watching it either.

And so far we've noticed that:

Maulgar: Yes, dies to Whirlwind if you dont micro-manage your pet.

Gruul: Died a few times to cave-in since pets take full duration Stoned (30s i think)

Magtheridon: Can die, but if done correctly will live most of the fight without having to micro-manage too much.

Hydross: Easy, havent had him die yet. Just need to call back during transitions.

Lurker: I dont even use my pet since I stay on the small platforms the entire time. This fight is terrible for a BM hunter.

Tidewalker: 2p Riftstalker set bonus helps a lot for this. Also pet taking chain heals will live most of the time until I get watery graved and hit my own pet with tomb.

Karathress: Agreed, priest AoE waterbolt pretty much kills my pet every time if meleeing. I usually dont even use my pet for that one add.

Void Reaver: Terrible now with it taking 6-8k Pound damage every 10 seconds or so.

Solarian: Easy if pets receives chain heals.

Alar: Right now, will die most of the time to the flame buffet if it's 4+ ticks.

As for pet mend on PTR (heals for 425/tick, 2800 total if I remember correctly.). It should be fine, but pets will still need heals.

I've chained flame wreath because I fd'd and drank(was deadzoned) before iirc, so the pet rez thing may be a similarly odd occurrence. Not really movement, at least as I consider movement, but maybe it bypassed the "no pets will chain flame wreath" thing. It just seems too miraculous that a pet alive for the majority of Aran wouldn't eventually trigger it.


[Edit:] I'd consider Maulgar an acceptable fight for pets. You can have it dpsing the adds, and possibly OTing olm for 1-2 hits if your tanking is sucky. Whirlwinds in the later stage don't seem to be much of a problem either. And although they can easily kill your pet, once you get the adds down the fight's basically over. And the pet can help you down adds better while you're OTing Kiggler.

Well, as for FD/drink in flame wreath, as far as I can tell it considers getting up from FD to be someone entering a flamewreath and sets it off. I've seen the same thing with paladins and BoP/DS - when the buff expires, they gain flamewreath and explode. It's kind of funky how it works. My best guess as to the mechanics of this is that it checks to see if someone has gained/lost the buff after the initial cast - so if someone 'exits' the ring (by either walking, DSing, or FDing) they'll lose the buff. If you rez someone into your flame wreath, it appears to consider them as gaining the buff and detonates the ring. Kind of funky, but that makes sense to me.

I don't even bother with my pet on Aran most of the time - Aran always seems to arcane missle my pet and our interrupters always seem to fail to interrupt. Anyway, IF Aran didn't single target cast massive spells on your pet and IF pets didn't set off flame wreath, I would use my pet. This week I'm just going to put him on stay outside the door so I can get the FF buff and leave it at that.

Edit:
Maulgar is funky for pets. We tank Kiggler over by the gate leading to Gruul and then tank Blindeye on the path leading into Maulgar's room - all the way on the other side of the room. My pet usually despawns if I send him to Blindeye, so I either have to put him on Olm or just have him stand next to me and get arcane aoe'd to death by Kiggler. For a fight with as much potental AoE as the Maulgar encounter, though, it's surprisingly easy to keep your pet alive.

Once again, these tests are highly inaccurate due to the level of the mobs. BM obviously depends a lot on the pet, and the low level of these mobs means basically no misses and no glancing blows, which is very much not the case in boss fights. Due to damage multipliers in BM, a BM pet on those mobs will scale exponentially larger in terms of damage due to the mob's low armor.

As for Aran, they fixed him for a couple of weeks so that pets would and immunities would not set off flame wreathe. The same hotfix, they made it so that snakes from snake trap are considered pets (which is why they started showing up in your combat log if you have pet dmg turned on). After a couple of weeks, they had another hotfix and it broke the fight again. They say it's supposed to be fixed in 2.1.

Please read! Miss and glancing blows are included and I did lower DPS of pets. I forgot 5% dodge which I am going to fix now.

As for encounters:
King - send it for priest/warlock while tanking shaman then just send it in for king and call back when WW soon
Gruul - mostly luck based with cave in also huge dps loss due to stoned
Mag - P1 can be bad if people do not know how to interrupt, then it is pet paradise unless very unlucky

Myself I think I will go back to MM, was fun to try BM but it is like pre-TBC: later bosses have more and more anti pet features.

I never have a problem with pet on Maulgar...

Myself and another hunter hold aggro on Kiggler and send pet in on Kiggler after we have solid aggro, he lives just fine. After kiggler is down I just micro him in and out on whirlwinds.

My guild is very good about giving me a shadow priest and buffing my pet since I am BM so on fights like doomwalker or Tidewalker my pet lives way more often then it dies. With raid buffs I can get my pet over 9K hps. Over 10K with warlock. I use a Windserpent.

Lurker I just use him to get off one TBW before he gets smoked ;p

FYI, owl pets can't swim with Eyes of the Beast I tried to move my owl off the small platform to the middle platform and he sunk like a rock Windserpents, however, are good to go :p

So even with the new pet mend HOT being chain cast it won't be enough to keep the pet out of harms way. I am hoping that avoidance will seriously make a difference otherwise its going to be ugly for BM even in 2.1. I don't think there is anything healers hate more than to heal or buff hunter pets.

In that same vein, I recently discovered that the Mend Pet HoT is dispellable. Joy!

But on the up side, the Imp Mend Pet talent now reduces the mana cost by 10% per point in addition to potentially removing debuffs.

2.0
Aran: I think it is great to use your pet. He will soak up some damage and intelligent healers will keep him up so Aran has one more thing to shoot at. When I see the warning that flame wreath is being cast I put him on stay (and passive, but he is already on passive.) As soon as flame wreath is over I tell him to attack. The main reason for keeping him around is for one more target not so much for his DPS.

High King Maulgar: Thankfully I don't tank the shammy (go go feral druid) so I use my pet on the priest, lock, shammy without any problems. I never send him to the mage (blast wave) and once we are on Maulgar himself he often dies (from me not paying attention to cool down of whirl-wind) but that is very late in the encounter.

Gruul: Early in the encounter keeping my pet up is easy. Once the cave-ins get really nasty it is almost impossible.

Magtheridon: (I have never killed him.) I can not even come close to keeping my pet up past the first add. Actually, he might have made it to the second once or twice.

2.1
Aran: With some luck I wont have to put my pet on stay and can use snake trap for even more targets (IE it is fixed it again so [pets including snakes from the trap] don't set off the flame wreath.)

High King Maulgar: I don't see much change here, unless the blast wave and whirlwind do a lot less damage to the pet. Either way, my pet is usually alive 90%+ of the encounter in 2.0.

Gruul: Half damage from cave-ins will make this a relatively pet friendly encounter with a little micromanagement. If he has a lot of grows my pet is getting one-shotted now, it will only be half with the talent.

Magtheridon: Again, the -50% from AOE will be great but, the pet will still be taking a ton of damage and I don't see this being pet friendly.



On another note, I will have a hard time doing BM even after 2.1 finally hits because I have found that as a hunter, even one that does well in dps (near any class in damage) I am last to get considered when making groups. My raid leaders seem to think of it as a nuisance when I ask to be with a s-priest (when I was trying BM.)
Do others of you have the same problem? Do you think you could raid well as BM without a s-priest? How? Seems chain potting is not enough.

I petitioned a GM about the pet setting of the flame wreaths and he said it was a known issue that would be fixed in an upcoming patch.... I really miss my pet and the use of the snake trap on Aran because a lot of times my pet or the snakes would take the missiles and save a raid member. Being BM I can res my pet in 4 secs making it reusable to take one for the team and allowing me to use bestial wrath to escape the slowing effect before the arcane explosion and do extra damage. Can't wait for it to be fixed.

Shadowpriest, hunters here have shadowpriest. Sure it took lots of bitching to get hold of them.

But now if there is SP and Hunter in our raid, they ride together (except in special occasions). SP + NewMend + 50% aoe absorb = Hot stuf Really looking forward to it.

We group all 2-3 hunters (1-2 are BM, 1 is MM) with shadowpriest and demo lock - other mana users if someone is missing.
Anyone found better way to group hunters these days?

As for Ugly for BM. I Raided BWL/Aq40/Naxx with BM and imho TBC is more pet friendly. And looks like its improving.

Edit:
In all my Mag raids, pet died less often than me. In all Mag downs pet was up 100% of time. SR+FR help a ton, and SP makes enough healing.

Generally speaking my raid group is understanding and either puts me with a shadowpriest or a shaman (for mana stream) and my paladins will try to keep up JoW (although it will inevitably fall off). When I don't have a shadow priest, I chain pot. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt, but the alternative is having a hunter who's OOM autoshotting (which is worthless). My mana problems are less now as BM than they were as MM, however.

One of my concerns on Magtheridon relates to the shadowbolt volleys: if someone misses an interrupt, my pet takes a big hit. In 2.1, will shadowbolt volley be considered aoe? I mean, each bolt is actually targeted, so I'm unclear how that will work (if someone has tested this on the PTR, it'd be nice to know).

Amazingly my raid leader is quite accommodating when possible, even insisting my pet get buffs such as might and kings. Sometimes a pally will get sick of buffing it though ;p I want to be with a Shadow priest mainly cause of the healing for my pet and of course the mana is amazing as well.

As 41/20 I don't do any worse then a MM hunter on mana, and actually probably do a lot better due to not needing to use multishot in a regular rotation since I don't have 6 points tied into it.